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The Boy with the U. S. Aviators 


BOOKS BY FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER 


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LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON 


































































Three Masters of the Air. 

Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh. 

Clarence D. Chamberlin. 

Commander Richard E. Byrd. 








U. S. SERVICE SERIES 


THE 

BOY WITH THE 
U.S. AVIATORS 

W. BY 

FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER 

A \\ 

Illustrated from Photographs 




BOSTON 

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO. 

A 













Copyright, 1929, 

By Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. 

All Rights Reserved 

The Boy with the U. S. Aviators 




Printed in U. S. A. 


SEP 18 1929 

©CIA 


12455 




PREFACE 

Aviation in the United States has entered upon a 
new phase. The day of experiment is over, though 
all exploration is not yet done. It is unnecessary to 
repeat that America taught the world to fly, and was 
the first to cross the Atlantic and the Pacific. An 
American plane and aviator was the first to fly to 
the North Pole, another the first to fly across the 
Polar Sea. 

The task of air-work, now, is to bring into constant 
and practical usefulness the great flight-principles 
established by the pioneers like the Wright Brothers 
and the great fliers like Lindbergh, Chamberlin, 
Byrd, Wilkins, Hegenberger, and many others. The 
airplane is to be brought to the service of the Ameri¬ 
can public. 

To set forth what flying really is, to-day; to show 
the various and manifold aspects in which it has in¬ 
terwoven itself into the service of the U. S. Govern¬ 
ment and the life of the people; to portray — in a 
measure — the amazing growth of the industry and 


v 


VI 


PREFACE 


the stable and sure performance of American aircraft 
engines and American-built planes; and to give an 
added impetus to the urge of American youth to 
become highly-trained and experienced fliers, is the 
aim and purpose of 


The Author. 


FOREWORD 

In order to give reading interest to a book of this 
special nature, it is necessary to make use of spec¬ 
tacular doings and hairbreadth escapes in the air. 
These must not be regarded as typical of aircraft 
operations. However frequent such events have 
been in the experimental period of the past, they are 
so no longer. Commercial aviation in recent years 
has shown a smaller proportion of accidents per 
passenger carried than is shown either by the rail¬ 
roads or by automobiles. Aviation in the United 
States is not becoming safe; it has become safe. 


It is difficult to give credit to the large aviation 
literature which has been consulted, but special 
acknowledgment is made to books by Col. Charles 
A. Lindbergh, Commander Richard E. Byrd, Capt. 
George H. Wilkins, Mr. Clarence F. Chamberlin, Mr. 
Lincoln Ellsworth, and Mr. Lowell Thomas. Fur¬ 
ther, thanks are extended to the officials of the 


vn 



Vlll 


FOREWORD 


U. S. Army, U. S. Navy, U. S. Post Office Depart¬ 
ment, and the U. S. Forest Service for information 
and photographs; also to “U. S. Air Services” and 
“Aero Digest” for many courtesies extended. 

F. R.-W. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I 

PAGE 

A Parachute Drop 

• • * 

1 

CHAPTER 

II 


An Aerial Collision . 

• • 

. 18 

CHAPTER 

III 


Calamity Jack 

• • 4 

. 36 

CHAPTER 

IV 


Riding the Storm 

• • 1 

. 54 

CHAPTER 

V 


What is an Airplane? 

• • 

. 73 

CHAPTER 

VI 


The Fog Bogy 

• • 4 

. 94 

CHAPTER 

VII 


Into the Wilds 

• • 4 

. 118 

CHAPTER VIII 


The Stray Bullet 

» • 4 

. 139 

CHAPTER 

IX 


A Forest-Fire Rescue 

• • 4 

. 156 

CHAPTER 

X 



Aerobatics 


ix 


. 177 



CONTENTS 

X 

CHAPTER XI 

When Floods Rage . 

. 196 

The Air Mail 

CHAPTER XII 

• • • • i 

. 217 

Polar Ice 

CHAPTER XIII 

• • • • 4 

. 230 

Pan-America 

CHAPTER XIV 

• • • • • 

. 252 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Three Masters of the Air . . Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

The Parachute : Savior of Human Lives . 14 

Coming Home from U. S. Navy Maneuvers on 
the Pacific Ocean . . . . .15 

The ZR-2, Leaving the Ground for the Trial 
Flight.72 

What the U. S. Navy Has in Mind . . 73 

Colonel Lindbergh Arrives at Curtiss Field for 
the New York to Paris Hop . . . 120 

Colonel Lindbergh about to Hop Off . . 121 

Chamberlin’s Plane in Flight .... 138 

The Fokker Airliner, Powered with Three 
Wright “Whirlwind” Air-cooled Engines . 139 

Boeing Air Transport Mail, Passenger, and 
Express Plane Flying over the Ruby Moun¬ 
tains in Nevada.176 

The United States Navy’s New Airplane Car¬ 
rier Saratoga .177 

Commander Byrd in Plane Josephine Ford . 216 

xi 


xii ILLUSTRATIONS 

The Josephine Ford and the Norge . . .217 

Vought Airplane at Night, Showing Illumina¬ 
tion for Take-off.254 

Lieutenant J. R. Tate, before Jump at Pearl 
Harbor, Honolulu.255 


The Boy with the U. S. Aviators 



THE BOY WITH THE 
U. S. AVIATORS 

CHAPTER I 

A PARACHUTE DROP 

“Jump, Orvie! Backwards. As far out as you 
can!” 

The flames rolled out over the instrument-board 
of the little two-seater airplane, flying at a hundred 
miles an hour and over 2000 feet up. 

“But you, Father — ” 

“Jump!” 

The engine being throttled off and the intake 
closed, the order could be heard, clear and incisive. 

Accustomed to obedience, as an Army officer’s son 
must be, Orvie Lee unbuckled the strap, climbed 
to the edge of the cockpit, balanced himself there a 
moment in hesitation, then threw himself backwards 
in the air, trying to remember the frequent instruc¬ 
tions which he had received concerning the manage¬ 
ment of a parachute. 

Out, and down! 


2 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

He was in the air, falling, falling! 

The plane banked to clear him, following the slight 
sidewise motion of the control stick with that swift¬ 
ness characteristic of a modern well-balanced air¬ 
craft, inherently stable. 

“One! ” The boy counted the seconds aloud. 

The impetus received from the plane, flying at 
twice the speed of a fast express, carried him along 
for a fraction of a second, almost parallel to it. The 
boy could see his father begin to rise from his seat in 
the cockpit, shielding his face from the flames. 

“Two!” 

The pull of gravity seized the boy, and, with a 
startling suddenness in the change of angle, he began 
to drop. Instantly there rushed into his mind the 
ever-repeated admonition: 

“Don’t freeze your grip to the check-ring!” 

He was falling on his back, head slightly down¬ 
wards. 

The rush of air was bewildering, almost stupefying, 
and the sudden silence, after the steady roar of the 
airplane’s engine, sent a dull roaring through his 
ears. 

He was falling, swiftly falling! 

Often he had been told not to worry, when falling, 
if ever he should have to take to a parachute, for one 


A PARACHUTE DROP 


3 

does not fall any faster at the end of a drop than in 
the middle of it. Air resistance to a falling body 
increases in proportion to the square of the speed, 
and a man of normal size and weight attains his 
maximum velocity in about twelve seconds when 
dropping from a height. 

Right now, though, he was falling faster, ever 
faster, for the maximum velocity of fall had not yet 
been reached. 

“Three!” 

He was dropping at a speed of not less than a hun¬ 
dred feet per second, and, if anything should fail 
to work in his parachute, twenty seconds or less 
would bring him crashing to the ground. 

He did not think of the crash. He had not thought 
along so far. 

But a sudden alarm seized him lest the parachute 
should not have been properly folded, or lest the 
slip-ring should not work. He knew that such a 
thing had not happened in years, for a modern stand¬ 
ard parachute is almost infallible in its opening, but 
the fear flashed through his mind, just the same. 

“Four!” 

More than the required three seconds having 
elapsed since he leapt from the plane, the boy pulled 
the check-string. 


4 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

Down, and down, and down! 

Nothing happened. Was the parachute going to 
fail him? 

His momentum increased. 

Orvie’s dull fear flashed into an acute and agon¬ 
ized terror. 

So swiftly did the panic increase that the seconds 
seemed to split into fractions, each a full minute 
long. But he gritted his teeth and tried to keep the 
counting even. 

“Five!” 

He had dropped over 500 feet, already, and the 
parachute had not opened. 

For the first time he pictured the crash — and 
death! 

The boy had been told that he must allow at least 
three seconds for the parachute to inflate and open, 
but this remembrance was little comfort, now. 

It was his first jump, and the time of falling was a 
nightmare that would never end. 

He tried to twist his neck sideways to see whether 
the ground w6re not coming up to hit him, but, falling 
as he was, he had no control of his movements. 

The helplessness was terrifying. He squirmed 
and twisted in the air as though this would have 
some effect. 


A PARACHUTE DROP 


5 


The inexorable drop continued. 

“Six!” 

Surely there was something wrong! 

A cold perspiration broke out all over him. 

He cast an agonized look aloft. 

There was a bulge at the top of the parachute, now, 
making it look like a comet. 

Why did it not open? 

“Sev — ” 

At the instant, the risers jerked him into an up¬ 
right semi-sitting position and the parachute opened 
suddenly with a “whoosh” and a cannon-like “bang”, 
as the specially-woven Navy silk fabric took the 
terrific jar of stopping his meteor fall. 

Almost instantaneously, Orvie found himself 
thoroughly supported in the air, in a comfortable 
clasp, the well-adapted harness of the parachute 
distributing all his weight evenly and saving his body 
from any twisted wrench in the shock. 

He had fallen over 700 feet in a few seconds, and, at 
the moment of arrest, had a dropping speed of well 
over 125 feet a second when the parachute opened. 
But, as all parachutes are tested to resist a weight 
of over 200 pounds falling at a speed of 250 feet a sec¬ 
ond — which no falling human body can ever attain 
— the boy’s weight at that speed of fall was well 


6 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

within one-half of the resistance power of the para¬ 
chute. 

And what a change in speed! A moment before, 
he had been falling at over 100 feet a second, now, 
under the white spread of the giant parachute, he was 
floating by comparison, his dropping speed being 
not greater than 15 or 16 feet a second, perhaps even 
less, for Orvie was but a light weight. 

A couple of hundred feet lower, however, the para¬ 
chute began to rock with great swings, oscillating 
from side to side, largely because his weight was con¬ 
siderably under that to which the air resistance had 
been proportioned. The boy had been taught how 
to overcome this, by pulling the ropes on one side and 
thus side-slipping the parachute, but, very wisely, 
having had no experience in such a feat, he decided 
to let the ropes alone. The great silk bag overhead 
was capable of supporting twice his weight, and wind 
made no difference with it, since the parachute was 
swept quietly along with the breeze. 

Overhead, and shooting swiftly to the left, he 
could see the plane which he had left but a few sec- 
onds before, blazing in the sky and leaving a trail of 
smoke behind her. With the engine shut off, she was 
nose-heavy, but the absence of the weight of passen¬ 
gers partly counteracted this, setting the plane on a 


A PARACHUTE DROP 7 

slope only a little lower than even keel, gliding 
downwards as though to make a landing. 

To the right, Orvie thought he saw a black speck 
against the sky. This might be his father falling 
jsheer, the parachute not yet opened. 

Then a sudden tiny flick of orange above the black 
speck showed the boy that the distant parachute had 
opened safely, and had caught the reflection of the 
setting sun. 

“Dad’s all right!” he said aloud, with a breath of 
relief. 

The swing of his own parachute was a bit disturb¬ 
ing, though, in his sudden revulsion from fear to 
security, Orvie had no dread that it would spill. 

A little lower down, the parachute must have come 
into a stronger wind or air current, for the oscilla¬ 
tions first diminished and then almost stopped. It 
was easier so. 

After the bewildering and giddy rapidity of a drop 
through the air, the greatly reduced speed of de¬ 
scent with a parachute seems like loafing down or 
even floating, though, in reality, it is not anything 
of the kind. Even at the normal rate of 17 feet drop 
a second, that comes to just over 1000 feet a minute, 
equal to a fall from the roof of a three-story house 
while one can count steadily: “One — Two!” 


8 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

Suddenly Orvie realized that he must begin to 
think about landing. Since the parachute had 
opened, he was not going to be killed, that was cer¬ 
tain, but landing from a parachute drop has its dan¬ 
gers, just the same. 

Suppose he should drop over a town! Then it 
might well happen that he would land on the roof 
of a house, the parachute might collapse, and he 
would roll off that roof with almost as fatal results as 
though he had not come down harmlessly from 
2000 feet up. 

A glance below reassured the boy. He was not 
over any town or village. Below were fields, but 
they were dotted here and there with trees. And 
trees, he knew, might bring him a nasty fall. 

By the speed with which the parachute seemed to 
be passing over the ground, the boy realized that 
there must be quite a strong breeze, though, travel¬ 
ling with the wind, it was impossible for him to feel 
it. He had ground-speed, but not air-speed. More¬ 
over, he was heading straight for a small wood, 
though, below, the ground was clear. 

This was the time to side-slip the parachute, but 
Orvie was not confident enough to know when to re¬ 
verse the motion, and, if he side-slipped too far, he 
would come to the ground with force enough to break 


A PARACHUTE DROP 


9 

a leg. No, he would let side-slipping alone and trust 
to luck. 

He remembered the old saying current at Kelly 
Field, the army air-training-ground, which his father 
had often quoted to him in fun: 

“Providence protects aviators and fools; a cadet, 
therefore, has a double chance.” 

Still, the trees were a dangerous hazard. If he 
were caught in the higher branches, with the strong 
breeze which evidently was blowing, the parachute 
would turn sideways and, bellied out by the wind, 
would yank him violently through the boughs and 
he might fall some distance, after all. 

He was right over the wood, now, and coming down 
fast! 

The boy pulled his legs upwards and gave a little 
jerk sideways to avoid hitting the tallest of the trees, 
but plunged through the topmost twigs of one but 
little lower in height. This drag gave the parachute 
a sidewise angle which cut its air resistance, though 
the latter was still strong enough to crash him 
through the trees at the farther side of the copse. 
The parachute crumpled in and collapsed. Orvie 
came down, a good deal harder than he wanted, fair 
in the middle of a blackberry patch. 

But, like Bre’r Rabbit, the briars did him no harm, 


IO WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

for a flying suit is stout enough to resist even barbed 
wire. The Kelly Field motto about “aviators and 
beginners” proved true in his case, for the parachute 
came to earth just clear of the bushes — thus saving 
it from having the silk fabric torn by briars — and 
Orvie scrambled out from among the thorns safe and 
sound, with no other damage than a few scratches on 
his hands where he had put them over his face. 

‘Tm a member of the ‘Caterpillar Club’, now!” he 
said aloud, in great triumph, the alleged Caterpillar 
Club consisting of aviators who have saved their lives 
by parachutes in a compulsory jump. Parachutes 
must be made of real silk from silkworm cocoons — 
not alleged “silk” made of chewed-up wood. 

Orvie undid the buckles of his parachute harness, 
overpoweringly glad to find his feet on earth, and 
looked upwards to see if his father were still in the 
air. The aviator had jumped from the blazing plane 
several seconds later than his son, but, being heavier, 
he had reached the ground while Orvie was disen- 
tangling himself from the blackberry briars. 

Seeing no one in the air, Orvie jumped to the 
natural conclusion that his father must have come 
down on the other side of the little wood. 

He folded up his parachute with the greatest care 
— there is just one way, and no other, to fold a para- 


A PARACHUTE DROP 


ii 


chute, and the saving of life may depend upon its 
being done that way — put it back into the pack and 
started round the wood to find his father. He had 
escaped scot-free; perhaps his father had not been 
so lucky. 

The little clump of trees had looked formidable 
enough as he was dropping into them, but it was only 
a small copse. Though he felt a bit dazed by his 
fall through the sky, Orvie hurried around the wood 
and reached the other side in less than fifteen minutes. 

No one was in sight. 

Then his quick eye caught a gleam of white under 
the still strong light of sunset, and he hurried in that 
direction as fast as he could, calling: 

“Father! Father!” 

Presently there came an answering hail: 

“Hey, Orvie! Here! ” 

He dashed up. 

“Hurt, Father?” he called, as he came nearer. 

“Nothing serious,” answered Major Lee, as the boy 
came to his side. “My hands are a bit burned, and I 
struck ground just in front of two lopped-off stumps. 
A gust of wind caught the ’chute, dragged me between 
them, and twisted my leg a bit.” 

“But your hands, Father!” cried Orvie, horror- 
stricken. “They’re all scorched!” 


12 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

“A bit, Son. I couldn’t take them off the controls 
till you were clear.” 

“But I jumped at once!” 

“You thought you did, probably. But you hesi¬ 
tated a good thirty seconds before jumping, though 
you weren’t aware of it. Never mind that, now; 
they’re only skin burns. Help me up, Orvie; I think 
I can walk all right once I get on my feet.” 

The boy stooped. 

“Easy does it! There!” 

Throwing his less injured arm about the boy’s 
shoulders, he got up and hobbled a few yards. 

“Perfectly all right! There’s nothing broken. 
Just a sprain. I’ll lean up against that stump, there, 
while you pack my parachute. Do it carefully, Son; 
there’s no hurry.” 

“But we can repack it later on.” 

“No!” said his father firmly. “There’s only one 
way to do a thing properly, and that is to do it pro¬ 
perly every time. And if you’re ever going to be a 
flyer, learn from the start that there isn’t any ‘later 
on’ in aviation. Everything must be exact.” 

The parachute duly folded and packed, Orvie came 
back to help his father. 

“What now, Dad?” 

“Get to the nearest road, and let’s hope that a car 


A PARACHUTE DROP 13 

or a buggy or something comes along. I can hobble 
along, all right, but Pm not good for a ten-mile walk, 
and I didn’t see any town handy as we came down. 
The nearest one seemed to be over that way — ” he 
gestured with his head. 

“But your hands, Father — ” 

“Talking about them won’t do any good,” was 
the rather gruff answer, and Orvie remembered how 
his father detested that any one should fuss over him. 
“I started up the engine again, before leaving her. 
The thing I was most afraid of was that the blazing 
plane should come down and chase us, as it did 
Hutchinson.” 

“What was that? A plane without any one in it 
start a chase?” 

“Just that! Here, I’ll tell you about it as we go 
along. It was at Wilbur Wright Field. Lieutenant 
James T. Hutchinson was piloting a test flight of a 
Huff-Daland bomber — the light pattern — with a 
fellow named Stanley, if I remember, as observer. 

“They were about 8000 feet up when the plane 
caught fire, the gasoline just spurting out through a 
break in the line, and the hundred-mile-an-hour wind 
made by the plane’s forward flight bent that flame 
at right angles on the fliers like a Bunsen burner, such 
as you’ve seen used in your chemistry experiments at 


i 4 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

school. The metal cowling melted as though it had 
been made of candle wax, and the whole fuselage 
leaped into flame. Stanley made a jump to a wing. 
Hutchinson strained in a last vain effort to stall the 
engine. 

“Waiting only a second to make sure that his fly¬ 
ing mate would also have to desert the plane, Stanley 
jumped. The parachute opened normally. The 
pilot tried to set the plane controls straight to shoot 
the craft ahead, but one of the wings was already 
warped to a queer angle, and this rendered it un¬ 
manageable. 

“Hutchinson jumped. His parachute operated 
perfectly, too, and that ought to have been the end of 
his troubles. It was the beginning of them! 

“With the engine still running and one of the 
wings warped up at an unnatural angle, the plane 
came to a slight bank and began to do rings around 
the parachute, keeping exactly at the same propor¬ 
tionate height of drop. The pilot was encircled in a 
streaming wheel of flame. One would have sworn 
that there was a demon hand at the controls of the 
blazing plane. 

“Hutchinson admitted afterwards that he felt his 
hair rise on his scalp. There was something so dia¬ 
bolical in that pursuit by an aerial demon of fire. 



Courtesy of Irvin </ Air Chute Co., Inc. 

The Parachute: Savior of Human Lives. 







K and M Photo. 


Coming Home from U. S. Navy Maneuvers on the 

Pacific Ocean. 




A PARACHUTE DROP 


15 

“And the spiral around him drew smaller and 
smaller! The doom was closing in! 

“Hutchinson tried to side-slip his parachute, but 
this made matters only worse, for it brought him 
nearer to the orbit of that flaming spiral.” 

“Father!” 

“Yes, it’s about the most startling case in the rec¬ 
ords of the U. S. Army Service. But even that 
wasn’t the worst of it. There were two thousand 
rounds of machine-gun ammunition in the plane, 
and these started to crackle, bursting in every direc¬ 
tion as the craft of fire whirled around him. 

“And bombs! There were six of them on the 
plane! 

“The parachute, drifting with the wind, was now 
almost on the very orbit of this demon-driven thing, 
and, at its next circle, the flames licked out and nearly 
touched the parachute. The next time round — ! 

“But on the outer edge of the spiral, part of the 
superstructure dropped, blazing, and the plane side¬ 
slipped, but recovered, got to a level keel and com¬ 
menced to circle anew — fortunately, out of the way 
of the dropping pilot. 

“But another plane came in view, with Lieutenant 
Bertrandias at the stick. He thought the evolutions 
of the wheeling plane were unusual, and as he came 


16 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

nearer he saw that the craft was on fire; certain that 
some one must be guiding it, he flew close to tell the 
crew to jump. It seemed impossible to believe that 
the plane had no one at the controls. 

“The demon pilot — this is an absolutely authen¬ 
tic yarn I’m telling you, Orvie — took a look at 
Bertrandias and went after him, nosing up as though 
for a loop. Betrandias had to get into a nose dive to 
escape, and, at that, hadn’t many yards to spare. 

“The blazing plane — engine still running in some 
mysterious fashion — stalled at the vertical, came 
down in a close tail-spin, levelled out, took a slight 
dip which gave it flying speed, banked, circled, and 
started on a landing glide. About this time this 
engine stopped, and the plane came down, wheeled 
over a field, and prepared for a regular landing, but, 
at the last moment, dipped too far and struck nose 
down, bombs and gasoline going up together with 
a crash and a roar of flame like the first eruptive out¬ 
break of a volcano. 

“That might have happened to us, Orvie!” 

The boy shivered. 

“And Hutchinson?” he queried. 

“Both men came down all right. But no one 
would ever have believed their story if it hadn’t 
been witnessed, both from the ground and from the 


A PARACHUTE DROP 


17 

air; all who saw it declared that the masterless plane 
behaved exactly as though some malignant hand 
were at the controls. It's a classic in the annals of 
aviation, and the chances are about a million to one 
against its ever happening again.” 

“Is this the first time you’ve ever been on a blazing 
plane, Father?” 

“The first, and, I hope, the last. But it isn’t the 
first time I’ve taken out membership in the Caterpil¬ 
lar Club. I’ve had to jump before.” 

“When, Father? Tell me!” 

“Wait till we get to the road, then, and I’ll tell you 
while we’re waiting. Though it wasn’t anywhere 
near as startling as what happened to Hutchinson, it 
was lively enough, too!” 


I 


CHAPTER II 

AN AERIAL COLLISION 

Arrived at the road, Major Lee tried to sit on a 
broken bit of snake-fence, but it was clear that his 
leg was nastily twisted, and, after a minute or two, 
Orvie had to help stretch him on the grass. 

“Keep your ears open for a car, and your eyes for 
a light,” said his father. “I don’t want any one to 
pass without seeing us. Take my pocket search¬ 
light, it’s getting dark. If you hear anything on the 
road, jump out and flash a signal for help.” 

The boy kept silent, for it was clear that his 
father’s injuries were painful, but, after a few min¬ 
utes’ rest, the Major resumed, 

“So you want to hear about my first jump, eh? 
Well, it’ll help to pass the time. It was right near 
the end of my time at Kelly Field, just a couple of 
weeks before I got my wings. My buddy and I were 
on a team practising bombing formation.* ” 

“What machine, Father?” 

* This incident occurred at Kelly Field, Texas, January 18, 1927 
to Cadets It. E. Krider and G. T. Shleppy. 

18 


AN AERIAL COLLISION 


19 

“One of the regular ones, a big Martin bomber, 
with three Liberty engines — you’ve never seen one 
of the big ones, Orvie. At Kelly, these formation 
practices are divided into two periods, at least they 
were in my time, the pilot and the bomber exchang¬ 
ing places. My buddy piloted the first period, and 
then we made a landing while the Instructor told us 
each and severally how many different kinds of a fool 
we were. As a matter of fact, everything had gone 
off very smoothly, but that didn’t matter. Army 
way! 

“Well, we took off again just before 10 o’clock in 
the morning, a pretty cold day, too, as I remember 
it, that is for Texas. I was in the pilot’s seat. We 
were practising seven-ship bombing formation. I 
started out flying position No. 7 in the formation, 
which was in the rear. Before long, several of the 
fellows got out of position — they’d hear about it, 
afterwards! — and, according to instructions in such 
cases, I moved up to position No. 3, that is, Orvie, on 
the left and right behind the leader. 

“Martin bombers aren’t high fliers, but we were 
about 2000 feet up, just above the clouds. 

“The leader signalled for a left-hand turn, which 
placed us on the inside of the turn. I started to move 
over toward the ship next to me, ready to follow 


20 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

around in the turn, when the leader banked up sud¬ 
denly and abruptly.” 

“What did he do that for?” interrupted the boy. 
“Didn’t it put all the formation out?” 

“He did it because he had to, I suppose, or because 
something went wrong. It looked to me as though 
he had his controls over for a turn, but he must have 
hit a bump in the air; whatever it was, his controls 
wouldn’t take and he came up suddenly. 

“If I went on, we’d crash into him, so I tried to pull 
up, and, just as I did, I felt a big jolt in the rear. I 
looked around and saw that the aileron and a portion 
of the lower left wing were gone. 

“Another of the planes — it must have been No. 
5, right behind us, was just plunging past us, nose 
down, and it looked to me as if he had just plunged 
through our wings. I immediately rolled my aileron 
controls over to the right and jammed my left motor 
on, in an endeavor to lift the left wing to a horizontal 
position in the hope to right her. 

“But she wouldn’t right, and it was clear that she 
was going into a spin. 

“It was time for my buddy to look after himself, 
but he looked round and grinned as much as to say 
that he would stay until I gave the signal. I tapped 
him on the shoulder and motioned that it was time 


AN AERIAL COLLISION 


21 

to jump. He nodded. I gave him the signal, then. 
We both started back to the wings, because on a 
Martin bomber, with her three engines, the farther 
out you jump, the safer you are. My flying mate 
climbed out ahead of me, going between the motor 
and the fuselage on the left-hand side. I climbed 
out on top of the catwalk, so we would not get in each 
other’s way. 

“The plane was falling, now, and spinning faster 
all the time. My buddy evidently let his parachute 
drag him off the plane, opening it before he dropped 
from the wing, for I saw him leave the plane and his 
’chute open almost immediately. 

“But I was caught! 

“In the position the plane was falling, I had nipped 
my foot in the cross-brace wires of the centre sec¬ 
tion.” 

“Father!” 

“Yes, Son, that was a pretty narrow squeeze. If 
I had lost my head, or if the wires had been just a 
little more entangled, my first jump would have 
been my last. I thought for a moment I wasn’t go¬ 
ing to get free and the wind pressure was increasing 
rapidly. But I jerked my foot out, at last, — how, 
I haven’t the slightest notion, — and got hold of the 
ring in my ’chute before I turned loose with my 


22 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

hands. There wasn’t any time to be lost! That 
Martin bomber was going down like one of its own 
bombs. 

“I turned loose my grip and fell over from the 
right side of the fuselage. I saw the rudder flash 
over my head.” 

“Did you drop far, Father?” 

“I dropped fast, because you see, Orvie, the big 
bombing plane was falling already. It wasn’t like 
this last time, when our little Prairie Lark was flying 
on an even keel. You probably noticed that you shot 
forward parallel to the plane before you actually 
started to fall, didn’t you?” 

The boy nodded. 

“Well, in this first time I’m telling you about, I 
didn’t. I fell sheer, right from the start. I don’t 
think I’d have minded so much, but, some years be¬ 
fore— when parachutes were fairly experimental 
and parachute-jumping was a circus trick — I had 
seen an exhibitor killed by a parachute which didn’t 
open, and, for that second in the air, the memory 
of his fall flashed back into my mind. 

“I was a youngster then, Orvie, and air work was 
ten times more risky than it is to-day. I don’t mind 
saying that I was scared, and it seemed to me that I 
was dropping at about a mile a second. I was falling 


AN AERIAL COLLISION 


^3 

head downwards, too, and could see the ground—• 
and it’s always better if you don’t. That’s why I told 
you to jump out backwards. 

“I hadn’t gone far, a couple-of-seconds’ drop, say, 
when I gave the rip-cord a good jerk, and the para¬ 
chute opened immediately. You see, I was dropping 
fast. I’d dropped through the clouds, and the ship, 
falling, too, was lost to sight. I never saw her again. 

“My buddy was just a bit lower than I was, and 
quite close. I waved to him, but he was probably 
looking groundwards to see where he was going to 
land. Anyway, he didn’t wave back. My ’chute 
was working perfectly, so I began to pick out my own 
landing. There was a piece of cultivated ground 
over toward the edge of the mesquite for which I was 
heading, and I tried to jerk my ’chute over in that 
direction, but I didn’t make it by near a hundred 
yards. I did manage to clear the dense shrub, 
though, and landed safely, facing down-wind. I was 
dragged about fifteen or twenty yards, no more, and 

then the ’chute landed against a bush and collapsed 

$ 

enough for me to get up and jump on it to flatten the 
air out. My buddy had already landed, rather 
harder than I had, and had sprained his ankle a bit. 
I hadn’t a scratch or a bruise. I’m not so lucky this 
time.” 


24 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

“Well, Father,” the boy commented, “I suppose 
every flier may have to jump sometime. Didn’t 
Lindbergh have to, twice?” 

“Four times,” came the answer. “He tells about 
two of them in his book We, which we’ve got at the 
house and which I know you’ve read. But he’s 
actually had to take to a parachute four times. For¬ 
tunately for him — and for America — the ’chutes 
worked perfectly each time. 

“The first one was at Kelly Field, when he was 
training for his wings. He and another combat 
plane were maneuvering, when a sudden tail-wind 
gust made one of the planes unmanageable, and both 
went into collision.” 

“Another collision case! Did both the cadet 
pilots have to jump?” queried Orvie. 

“Both, and both came to the ground without a 
hitch. The service parachute had been brought al¬ 
most to perfection only a short time before. 

“Lindbergh’s second drop was when he was testing 
a private plane — at Lambert Field, St. Louis, if I 
remember rightly. Something went wrong with the 
plane, nobody ever knew just what it was, and at 
3000 feet, it suddenly went into a left-hand spin. 
Nine times out of ten a good flier can recover 
from this, but the machine wasn’t acting to her con- 


AN AERIAL COLLISION 


25 

trols, though Lindy stuck to her until within 300 feet 
before he jumped.” 

“Wasn’t that too low to risk a jump?” 

“Much. But if he hadn’t risked it, there wouldn’t 
have been anything left of him. As it was, although 
the parachute opened immediately, he came to 
ground with force enough to injure his shoulder 
pretty badly. 

“The third time was on a night flight, taking off 
from Peoria. A thick ground fog came up, with a 
ceiling as low as 600 feet, too low for safety. As for 
flying above it, what was the use ? Lindy would only 
have had to fly until the fuel was exhausted and then 
come down, anyway. He could see no lights. He 
tried to get back to Peoria Field, but could see no 
break in the fog. Then he tried to get to the May- 
wood Field at Chicago, but the fog held thick and 
heavy. His fuel tank ran dry and he cut into the 
reserve. But though he flew in every direction to try 
to find some hole in the fog, there was none. Flying 
lower, with only a few minutes of fuel left, he saw the 
glow of a town dimly through the fog. Knowing, 
then, that if he landed a couple of miles away he 
would not risk the lives of those below by having the 
plane crash on busy streets, he ran up to five thou¬ 
sand feet and jumped. 


26 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 


“You ought to read his story, Orvie, telling how the 
falling plane, spiraling down, seemed to chase him, 
something as it did Hutchinson; but it wasn’t on 
fire, of course. He landed in a cornfield, absolutely 
tinhurt, and, after a long hunt in the fog, found the 
crashed plane ‘all wound into a ball-like mass’, as 
he puts it, but with the mail uninjured. You see, 
Orvie, here was a case where there was nothing on 
earth wrong with the plane. The smash was purely 
due to inability to make any landing at all in a heavy 
fog.” 

“Couldn’t he have made a landing and chanced 
it?” 

“If he had,” explained his father, “he would have 
risked killing others, he would probably have been 
killed himself, and he wouldn’t have saved the plane, 
either. As it was, he hurt no one, saved his own life, 
and didn’t lose the mails. 

“The fourth jump was also a night flight with the 
air mails. This time it was snow, and not fog, which 
stopped him. He had taken off from his Springfield 
stop, but, very soon after, the clouds lowered until 
the ceiling was less than 400 feet. A light snow 
started to fall, and Lindy had to travel close to 
ground to see any lights at all. He managed to lo¬ 
cate Peoria, but the snow now fell heavier and began 


AN AERIAL COLLISION 


27 

to swirl; circle as much as he might above the field, 
there was no chance of making a landing. As before, 
he made for Chicago, climbing to get up out of the 
snow. At two thousand feet, the black snow-cloud 
still held. He tried, once, to descend and make a 
chance landing, but the parachute flare which he 
dropped was instantly lost in the driving snowstorm. 
He banked steeply to follow it — almost too steeply, 
and barely recovered himself from a side-slip close to 
ground. About one second’s delay in decision would 
have been death, but Lindy saved himself — he 
never knew by how close a margin, a few feet, at most. 

“Was that snow never going to stop? Was the 
whole world in snow? He climbed up to 14,000 
feet — that’s pretty high, Orvie — but the snow was 
as blinding there as on the ground nearly three miles 
below. He judged that he was not near any town, set 
his plane to a level glide, climbed over the cockpit and 
threw himself off at thirteen thousand feet. In spite 
of his flying suit, he nearly froze on the way down, but 
landed safe and sound on a barbed wire fence, which 
helped to break his fall. 

“But I want you to notice, Orvie, that each and 
every one of these was due to a risk which wouldn’t 
be taken in ordinary passenger aviation. One was 
maneuvering with combat planes as though in battle, 


28 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 


one was testing an untried plane, and the other two 
were night flights in foggy and snowy weather. The 
parachute will always be useful in such kinds of risky 
flying, but, aside from that, the time has come when 
an airplane passenger thinks no more about his para¬ 
chute than a passenger on an ocean liner bothers 
where the life-belts are kept.” 

“Yes,” said the boy dubiously, “but on some of the 
big liners they have regular life-belt and boat drill. 
And I’ve often wondered, Father; why weren’t para¬ 
chutes used in the War?” 

The Major looked grave. 

“You touch on a very serious question, there,” he 
said. “The Germans used them, and more than a 
score of their pilots saved their lives. The Allies 
didn’t use them at all.” 

“But they’d been invented, hadn’t they?” 

“Yes, they were in regular use on balloons. As for 
the value of parachutes from airplanes in war — I’m 
not sure. It would depend a good deal on what was 
regarded as 'sporting’, by fighting etiquette. Sup¬ 
pose an enemy plane were shot down — by being put 
on fire, for instance — and the pilot took to a para¬ 
chute, ought the victorious pilot to turn his machine 
gun on the helpless enemy or not?” 

“Certainly not!” burst out Orvie. 


AN AERIAL COLLISION 


29 

“But there’s no way of taking a parachute-dropper 
a prisoner, if he’s falling within his own lines, and 
if he escapes, that’s like giving the enemy another 
aviator — and first-class fliers in the World War were 
a valuable military asset. How about it, Orvie? 
After all, when he’s in his plane you’re doing your 
best to shoot him, and he’s doing his best to shoot 
you ” 

“Yes, but that’s different,” the boy insisted. 
“He’s got a sporting chance. More than that, it’s a 
fair duel, and that’s a part of war. But to shoot him 
when he’s falling, and can’t hit back! What would 
you do, Father?” 

“I’d let him go free, I think,” said the Major slowly, 
“then report to my squadron commander. It would 
mean court martial, I suppose, and I haven’t the 
faintest idea what the decision would be. In the 
next war — and may that be a long way off! — it is 
a point which will have to be decided. If one side 
starts to shoot parachute-droppers, the other will 
have to do the same in reprisal. That’s what always 
happens. 

“But — ” and Major Lee grew grave, “where I 
have always felt that there was a neglect of the use 
of parachutes was on the training-fields for pilots 
when the United States first entered the war. In one 


3 o WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

of Byrd’s books there’s a chapter called 'On the Thin 
Edge of Eternity’, which makes grim and pitiful read¬ 
ing; he tells of the daily crashes, 'two or three a day, 
sometimes’, at the Naval Training Station at Pensa¬ 
cola. 

" 'One such accident,’ he writes, 'I remember with 
peculiar vividness. Several planes were over the 
station one morning working out the beginnings of 
air maneuvers, then in their infancy. The planes 
were flying in formation: that is, close together and 
turning together on signal . . . They were turn¬ 
ing and twisting with a neatness and accuracy that 
drew the attention of nearly every one on the station. 
Suddenly those of us on the ground saw a breath-tak¬ 
ing sight. One of the planes used a hair too much 
rudder on the turn. It side-slipped and skidded into 
another machine. Instantly the pair locked and 
fell. As parachutes were not used, then, there was 
never a chance for the fliers.’ Nothing can be much 
worse than a collision in the air.” 

"It seems to me — ” Orvie began, then jumped up 
as the drone of an approaching motor was heard. 
"I’m glad we had our parachutes!” he added, as he 
went to flash and stop the coming car. 

"Yes, a ’chute is something you don’t want till you 
want it, and then you want it mighty badly.” 


AN AERIAL COLLISION 


3 1 


The car came to a sudden stop. 

‘ ‘What’s the trouble?” boomed a voice in the dark. 

“We’ve just had to take a parachute drop from a 
blazing airplane, sir,” said the boy, “and my father — 
Major Lee — is hurt.” 

“Badly?” 

“No,” came the Major’s strong voice, “leg twisted 
a bit. Come and help me up, Orvie.” 

The owner of the car jumped out. 

“Sho’ ! That’s too bad.” He helped Major Lee 
into the car, and began regaling them with all the 
parachute accidents he had ever heard or read about. 
As he knew nothing whatever about flying, some of 
his descriptions nearly made Orvie laugh outright, 
and he was glad that darkness covered his smiles. 

Presently this wore on the aviator’s nerves, and he 
tried to give the subject a less tragic turn. 

“Parachute-jumping has its humors, too,” he said. 
“Chamberlin — the chap who flew from New York to 
Germany, told me his experiences with a negro para¬ 
chute-jumper and aviator, The Ace of Spades’. 
Chamberlin had plenty of fun with that blackbird. 

“One time, Chamberlin took him up, and just when 
the parachute bellied out in full spread, ready to pick 
him off the wing, the darky got a full-size scare and 
wrapped his arms and legs around the strut which he 


32 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

ought to have let go. The jerk broke the strut, crip¬ 
pled the plane, and it was only by superb piloting 
that Chamberlin got her to the ground at all. 

“The next time, The Ace of Spades’ advertised 
that he was going to drop into a vacant lot in Harlem, 
New York, but he miscalculated the wind and came 
down on the roof of a department store. A near-riot 
followed, for there were thousands of negroes looking 
on and the police reserves were called out to restore 
order. There was a clear case against him, but sen¬ 
tence was suspended and he was placed on probation 
for six months. 

“ Two or three days before this period of good 
behavior had elapsed,’ writes Chamberlin, ‘he got 
me to take him over Harlem for another jump. This 
time he came down neither on a building nor in the 
street, his parachute catching on the cornice of a 
three-story or four-story building, so that he was left 
dangling in mid-air. 

“ The inevitable mob assembled, but the para¬ 
chute jumper didn’t know whether to be more pleased 
by their plaudits or alarmed over his precarious posi¬ 
tion. His mind was still occupied with this problem 
when a window opened beside him and two brawny 
blue-clad arms hauled him inside. The visitor from 
the skies caught the familiar glint of brass buttons. 


AN AERIAL COLLISION 33 

“ ‘ “Mister,” ’ he asked, his eyes still wide from his 
narrow escape, “ * “where is I at?” ’ ” 

“ ‘ “Nigger,” ’ was the stern answer, “ ‘ “you 
dropped right into the 37th Precinct station-house. 
That’s where you are. And you’re under arrest 
again, too.” ’ ” 

“ ‘The prisoner heaved a sigh of relief. 

“ ‘ “Thank Got I’se home!” said he.’ ” 

Orvie laughed aloud, and the car-owner asked: 

“Was that the chap who advertised that he was 
going to fly to Liberia — long before the time of 
Lindy?” 

“The same one. He used to call himself ‘The Only 
African Aviator’. I guess he was, too. I suppose 
you’ve heard how that flight ended?” 

“No! Did he ever start?” 

“Yes, he actually started. One can never tell, he 
might have got across by a stroke of luck and got the 
biggest world’s record of all for the negro race. 
What happened was this. ‘The Ace of Spades’ went 
all over the country, in the negro section especially, 
raising funds to buy a plane for this trans-Atlantic 
flight. The only trouble was that some of his col¬ 
lecting was done by mail, and, since he gave a definite 
date for the flight — July 4, 1924 — the Post Office 
Department got after him, thinking that he was just 


34 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

collecting the money for himself, which, of course, 
would be defrauding by use of the mails. It put one 
of the negro agents of the Department of Justice on 
his track. Chamberlin tells how the darky detective 
put it to the darky aviator. 

“ ‘ “Nigger” 7 , he said impressively and ominously 
to the blustering aviator,‘ “you has got a maybe air¬ 
plane to show for all your talk, I admits, but you has 
likewise advertised widely and permiscuously to a 
susceptible world that you is gwine t 7 fly t’ Liberia 
on the Fourth of July. Does you fly t 7 Liberia on 
that day an’ date, I an 7 you won’t quarrel, but does 
you fail to fly to Liberia on the Fourth of July, you 
flies to Atlanta Penitentiary for twenty years.” 7 ” 

“I 7 ve heard of forced landings,” put in Orvie. 
“That was what you might call a forced flight.” 

“It was. But The Ace of Spades 7 was more than 
half-way in earnest. The pointed words of that De¬ 
partment of Justice agent supplied the other half. 
The negro had planned to go via Atlantic City, 
Cuba, South America, and St. Paul’s Rocks, to 
Liberia. Chamberlin had sold him a re-conditioned 
Boeing seaplane with a powerful Isotta-Fraschini 
200 -horse-power engine. 

“The Fourth of July came at last, but there was 
still some money due, and the builders of the plane 


AN AERIAL COLLISION 


35 

wouldn’t let it start. At the last minute, though, 
and while The Ace of Spades’ kept a timorous eye on 
the husky negro detective, two men came forward 
and offered to make up the balance. But the tide 
had gone out of the Harlem River and it was neces¬ 
sary to tow the plane to Hell Gate. 

“Chamberlin got his motor started for him. It 
was running as smoothly as could be. With a final 
handshake of farewell, the darky gave it the gun and 
was on his way. He got into the air all right and 
passed out of sight into Flushing Bay. He had 
started. He was free from the ominous shadow of 
the postal laws. 

“But, once in the air, he thought he knew it all. 
Wanting to come back to circle over Harlem to show 
his skill, he made a steep banking turn over Flushing 
Bay — probably trying to climb at the same time — 
stalled, side-slipped, did an unexpected cart-wheel 
and the next thing he knew he was in the water. He 
was hardly hurt at all — but two minutes in the air 
and a ducking was a cheap escape from twenty years 

in the Atlanta Penitentiary. And Liberia is still 

\ 

waiting for its aerial negro emissary from the United 
States. But, considering what airplanes were in 
those days, it was a plucky attempt. And that’s the 
story of The Ace of Spades’.” 


CHAPTER III 


CALAMITY JACK 

“Look here, Orvie, you’re not really going to be 
such a chump as to take up flyin’ for a livin’?” 

“Why not?” 

“Well, get a gravestone ordered, that’s all, an’ 
tell the marble-cutter to put on it: ‘Died young’.” 

“I’ll order yours first, Jack,” came the sharp retort, 
and put on it: ‘Killed by speeding’. With that sport 
runabout of yours, you’re running ten times more 
chances than I ever shall be. I’ve never yet seen 
any one saved from an automobile accident by a 
parachute. There isn’t time. When you turn 
turtle at seventy miles an hour, it’s generally the 
finish.” 

Jack tilted his hat back and scratched his head 
dubiously. He couldn’t think of a prompt reply. 

“But look at the aviators killed in the World War! ” 
he said at last. 

“Just as many of our infantry fellows ‘went West’ 
in the trenches. Oh, I know all about you and your 
war talk, Jack. You grouse about it, and say it 

ought never to happen again — so it oughtn’t; but 

36 


CALAMITY JACK 37 

I’d take a bet that if some one started to shoot up the 
Stars and Stripes, ‘Calamity Jack’ would be one of 
the first to step on the gas to find the nearest recruit¬ 
ing office.” 

“Well, in that case, I don’t say — ” 

“Of course you don’t,” Orvie interrupted, “and, if 
you did, I shouldn’t believe you. ‘Grumble and go 
makes a good sailor’, they say, and that’s about your 
size. You’d grumble, but you’d go. And if we ever 
should have to do anything for Uncle Sam, the two 
of us, I’d rather be aloft in a snappy little combat 
plane than tramping through the mud with a forty- 
pound load on my back.” 

“Matter of taste,” replied his chum. “I’ll keep my 
two feet on the ground.” 

“In army boots, and a blister as large as a silver 
dollar on each heel! You’re welcome to it. Or 
maybe you think they’ll promote you to general, or 
marshal, or something of that kind while you’re still 
a rookie. That prancing-horse business is all right 
in parades, but it simply doesn’t exist in modern 
war.” 

“Look-a-here, Orvie, you’re losin’ your bearin’s. 
What can an Air Force do without infantry?” 

“Nothing,” came the prompt agreement. 
“Every one knows that. Cavalry and artillery and 


38 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

air work are only supports to the infantry. But I’d 
hate to be in a regiment raked by airplanes with no 
means of defense from the air. Why, Boy, you’d 
never know what had happened!” 

a Air warfare should be barred,” grumbled Jack. 

“Admitted,” was Orvie’s cheerful reply. “So 
should artillery, and rifle fire, and the bayonet, and 
grenades, and a whole lot of other things. The only 
thing you’re forgetting is that it wouldn’t be war. 
And American troops are for defensive purposes. 
That’s why I’m for the Flying Corps, if there ever 
should be another war, and for the flying business in 
times of peace. How’d you like to have your home 
town bombarded by Zepps?” 

Jack tapped his forehead. 

“You’ve got a screw loose, Orvie. Haven’t you 
learned yet that the airship is about the biggest frost 
on earth?” 

“Why?” 

“Look how many of them have smashed up! An’ 
it’s only a chance when an airship gets anywhere at 
all.” 

“Great reasoning! ” came the chaffing reply. “Be¬ 
cause Magellan got killed in the Philippines and Cap¬ 
tain Cook was eaten by cannibals in Hawaii, there¬ 
for it’s impossible to reach those places by ship! 


CALAMITY JACK 39 

Which doesn’t prevent forty-thousand-ton ocean 
liners touching there every week. If you can’t think 
up some better argument than that, Jack, you’d bet¬ 
ter go back to kindergarten.” 

<r Well,” snapped back his chum, “answer me this. 
Is it, or isn’t it, true that the airship is the costliest 
thing to build in the world, considering how easily it 
can be shot down by incendiary bullets in war, an’ 
considerin’ that it can’t pay for itself by carryin’ 
freight for a million voyages, because of its low rate 
of lift?” 

“Quite true, Jack, and you’ve got hold of the right 
end of the stick. The airship, as at present devel¬ 
oped, is an easy prey to airplanes and it’s the play¬ 
thing of the weather into the bargain; you’re right, 
too, in saying that as a freight-carrier any wheezy 
old locomotive or tramp steamer can beat it hollow. 
But Fulton’s steamboat wouldn’t have had much 
chance against a snappy-sailing buccaneer or private 
ship, and a few husky mules would have carried as 
much freight as the Clermont did from New York to 
Albany. ‘Lighter-than-air’ craft don’t interest me 
much, but it’s nonsense to say that, because they’re 
not of much commercial use yet, they never will 
be. That’s the way sailing skippers talked of steam 
a century ago.” 


4 o WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

“What has the airship done?” taunted Jack. 

“ ’Tisn’t fair to ask me to crack the airship up, 
when all my interests lie the other way,” was Orvie’s 
reply, “but when the U. S. Navy thinks it good 
enough to spend a few million dollars for a couple of 
airships of six and a half million cubic feet capacity, 
I’m willing to allow that the Navy knows a bit more 
than I do. Airships have shown that they can act 
as valuable scouts for a fleet, that they can be very 
awkward customers in bombing operations — ask 
England about the Zepp raids in the war, they can 
be flown across the Atlantic, they can go to the North 
Pole, and they can, and do, carry a hundred passen¬ 
gers at a trip. You get hold of a real ‘lighter-than- 
air’ man, Jack, and he’ll convince you that the 
transportation of the future lies in the airship, or 
he’ll talk himself to a whisper trying. He may be 
right, or he may be wrong — the next twenty years 
will probably tell — but you can stake your last dol¬ 
lar that it would be a hard thing to convince the 
Navy and Congress, both, to spend good money on 
moonshine.” 

“That sounds reasonable,” said his chum. 

“And they’ve certainly got the right of it when 
they say that the ‘lighter-than-air’ craft started avia¬ 
tion. There was only hot air in the Mongolfier bal- 


CALAMITY JACK 41 

loon, but it wasn’t the hot air that these calamity 
boys talk!” 

“Oh, balloons!” 

“Yes, balloons, too! A dozen of our best Ameri¬ 
can aces wouldn’t have lost their lives strafing bal¬ 
loons in the War unless they had been mighty useful 
to the enemy. That’s the way that Arizona Luke 
went.” 

“Who was Arizona Luke’?” 

“One of the crackerjack flyers of the Twenty- 
Seventh Aero squadron, and it takes a pilot and a 
writer like Lowell Thomas * to tell about him. He 
puts it this way, as near as I can remember: 

“ ‘ ’Twas toward the end of July 1918, that the 
squadron stationed near Chateau Thierry received a 
batch of pilots from the American flying-school at 
Issoudun. Among them was a lad of twenty from 
Phoenix, Arizona, just out of high school. Another 
pilot in the same batch was a stolid phlegmatic chap, 
Fritz Wehrner, and the two were the closest kind of 
pals.’ 

“Luke was a good flyer, but he hated formation 
tactics and nearly got himself into trouble a dozen 
times by flying off without much regard to orders. 
That wasn’t discipline, but Luke pulled off a few vic- 

* “European Skyways,” Lowell Thomas, Houghton Mifflin & Co. 


42 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

tories entirely on his own, and the squadron com¬ 
mander let him alone. But the place to begin the 
story is where Luke got the balloon-strafing fever. 

“ ‘It was in August. On the extreme right of the 
American sector were two German observation bal¬ 
loons — those balloons, Jack, my boy, that you’re so 
ready to sneer at! — and these had been doing great 
damage by directing an enfilading fire against the 
Yanks. French and American pilots had repeatedly 
tried to destroy them, but without luck. The two 
Heinie “sausages” were heavily protected by batteries 
of anti-aircraft guns and formations of protecting 
planes.’ ” 

“They had to be backed up by something!” 
grunted Calamity Jack. 

Orvie paid no attention to him, and went on: 

“ ‘Now strafing balloons that were given this sort 
of protection was a ticklish affair, so much so that the 
Germans credited their own fliers with two victories 
for every balloon brought down. Our chaps had al¬ 
ready made a reputation at balloon-strafing. But 
those two particular gas-bags swung mockingly in 
front of our advancing lines. 

“ ‘Luke asked the squadron commander if he might 
go after them, and off he went, trailed as usual by 
his pal, Wehrner. They flew to a great height and 


CALAMITY JACK 43 

then Luke suddenly dropped out of the cloud and 
dived straight at the face of the balloon. The attack 
took the Germans by surprise and he could easily 
have fired his flaming bullets into the great bag if his 
gun hadn’t jammed. Of course his dive caused 
every near-by anti-aircraft battery to get going, and 
up swarmed the protecting planes. 

“ ‘Luke climbed again, the German scouts hot after 
him. 

“ ‘Wehrner drew a couple of them away, but Luke 
seemed to pay no attention to the Fokkers. Up and 
up he circled, and when in position again, he turned 
her nose down and went into another dive, plunging 
straight through the hail of shrieking shrapnel from 
the German Archies. This time his machine-gun did 
not fail him, the balloon went up in flames and the 
observer jumped in his parachute. Luke and 
Wehrner headed for home, followed by the puffs of 
the Archies. When he eased his little scout on the 
turf and taxied up to his hangar, the crowd that ran 
out found the balloon-strafer’s plane riddled with 
bullets.’ 

“Good work, eh, Jack?” 

“But he didn’t stop there, did he?” 

“Getting interested? Want the rest of the story? 
Here goes, then: 


44 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

“ Two days later, Luke came home with a second 
scalp. 

“ This time, a formation was sent out to cover his 
attack. The American planes had scarcely reached 
the rendezvous in the sky when they were set upon 
by a formation of Fokkers. The dog-fight began, 
but, out of the thick of it, Luke dived toward the 
balloon. A shower of machine-gun bullets, anti-air¬ 
craft shells, and flaming “onions” greeted him. 

“ ‘His fast dive missed! 

“ The dog-fight was still on when he regained his 
altitude. 

“ ‘Just below the swirl of darting planes he flopped 
over, and plunged once more straight into that aerial 
maelstrom of anti-aircraft missiles. A vast burst of 
flame shot up, and the gas-bag dropped in a cloud of 
smoke. When the wheels of Luke’s plane touched 
the flying-field, the machine fell to pieces. It had 
been hit in a hundred places — almost shot out from 
under him. 

“ ‘Borrowing another, that same afternoon he set 
off again. Once more a formation followed, and 
again his escort took on a formation of Fokkers. 
Just as he had done in the morning, Luke slipped 
away from the dog-fight and made straight for his 
victim, Wehrner right after him. 


CALAMITY JACK 45 

“ Tight more Fokkers, that had just come on the 
scene, swept down to drive them from the sky. Luke 
sped right through them, apparently never for a 
moment taking his eye off the balloon he had spotted. 
Once more a burst of machine-gun fire, and another 
German “sausage” was out of commission. 

“ ‘From that time on Luke talked of nothing but 
balloons. Day and night he planned ways of de¬ 
stroying them. He seemed to have a mania for this 
strafing game. Hour after hour he experimented 
with various types of machine-guns and explosive 
shells. Whenever weather permitted, he would be 
in the air hunting them down. 

“ ‘September 15 , he went out near a village called 
Boinville. Three other planes followed, in time to 
arrive above the balloon sixty seconds behind Luke. 
Gas-bags on the American side of No Man’s Land 
were instructed to keep their eyes on the Boinville 
“sausage” at exactly five-five in the afternoon. 

“ ‘Right to the dot the American balloon observers 
saw a Spad winging its way toward the American 
lines with five Fokkers on its tail and a burning “sau¬ 
sage” lighting up the sky in the background. 

“‘Luke landed just over the American trenches. 
His comrades thought he had crashed, but he had 
merely come to earth to get his bearings and for in- 


46 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

formation regarding another enemy balloon. A few 
minutes later he was high in the air, and before half 
an hour had passed a second observation bag was in 
flames. 

“ ‘As usual he returned to his aerodrome with his 
little Spad riddled with bullets. But a telephone 
message from headquarters announced that there was 
still another enemy “sausage” on the horizon. So, in 
the gathering dusk, he and Wehrner set out, and just 
at nightfall a great flame lit up the sky. 

“ ‘On the following day, again toward sundown, 
Luke walked to his plane and called out to several 
pilots standing by: 

“‘“See those ‘sausages’?” He pointed out two 
specks in the distant sky, fully two miles behind the 
German lines and about four miles apart. “The first 
one is going up at seven-fifteen, and the second at 
seven-nineteen.” 

“ ‘He and Wehrner took off, and the men around 
the field stood with their watches in their hands and 
their eyes fixed on the distant bags. 

““‘There she goes!” exclaimed Major Hartney, 
the pursuit group commander. 

“ ‘A flare lighted up the horizon. It was exactly 
seven-fifteen. 

“ ‘By now the second balloon was lost in the dusk, 


CALAMITY JACK 47 

but eyes were fixed on that part of the horizon where 
it had been seen a while before. At seven-nineteen 
there was a yell from the group. A second glare 
flashed at the point where they had fixed their eyes/ ” 

“Is this straight goods, Orvie, or are you making it 
up?” 

“From the official records! And that isn’t all of it, 
either: 

“ Two days later, on the 18 th, the last half-hour 
of daylight found the two inseparable airmen above 
one of the two balloons that the Germans had near 
each other on the edge of Three-Fingered Lake. No 
hostile aircraft were in sight. Apparently the enemy 
thought it too late to worry about attacks from Allied 
air-men. 

“ ‘Luke went into a dive while Wehrner waited 
above, watching. It took Luke three dives before he 
got his victim. 

“ ‘Luke zoomed up to meet Wehrner when he saw 
a formation of six Fokkers bearing down upon him. 
Perhaps Wehrner had fired the rocket which was 
agreed upon as the signal for such an emergency. If 
he had, Luke, in the midst of all the blazing Archie 
fire, had failed to see it. At any rate, Wehrner was 
now patrolling on a line to keep a path of retreat open 
for Luke. 


4 b with the u. s. aviators 

“ The German airmen had laid a trap for the two 
daring “sausage” destroyers, who were now recog¬ 
nized as their two most dangerous antagonists. The 
Fokkers had lain in waiting, hidden among the clouds, 
knowing that the two balloons would be bait that 
would surely draw the birds they were after. 

“ Those six Fokkers were coming from the west — 
that is, from the opposite side to Germany. They 
had cut off the direct line of retreat to the American 
lines. But Wehrner was holding open a line of es¬ 
cape further to the north. The second balloon lay 
still further to the east. 

“ ‘With characteristic rashness, Luke had made up 
his mind in a flash to get away by running east, 
deeper into Germany, taking a few shots at the sec¬ 
ond “sausage” on the way and then slipping around 
the Fokkers. The German formation spread out to 
cut him off. Over balloon number two he made a 
single perfect nose-dive, and the sky was ablaze with 
exploding hydrogen.’ ” 

“But I don’t understand,” said Jack, “why didn’t 
Luke get blown up himself, then?” 

“A nose-dive,” explained his friend, “means drop¬ 
ping like a stone. Half a second after Luke fired, he’d 
be a hundred feet or more below the balloon. Of 
course, the force of the explosion would set the air 


CALAMITY JACK 49 

into a whirl, but a second more of drop would take 
Luke to where he could pull back the joy-stick a bit 
and bring the plane level. 

“ When he zoomed up, Luke saw himself entirely 
surrounded by German planes, save in the direction 
of Germany. Three more pursuit ships were clos¬ 
ing in on him, making nine in all. 

“ ‘Wehrner, never suspecting that Luke would be 
so foolish as to attack the second balloon under such 
circumstances, had kept to his post right to the last. 
He now could have turned west and slipped off 
home, leaving Luke to shoot it out with the ring of 
enemies. But Wehrner was not that sort. Luke 
saw his pal sail straight into the three oncoming 
Fokkers, attempting to open a way for the balloon 
strafer. The three enemy planes directed a converg¬ 
ing fire on the lone Spad. 

“ ‘Wehrner’s machine fell over on its side. Luke 
saw a path of fire leap from the gasoline tank. 

“ The Spad went down in flames! 

“ ‘Luke turned upon the three who had sent his 
pal into his last dive. They were above him, but, 
crazed with fury, he zoomed straight at them. Pick¬ 
ing out one, he disregarded the others and poured a 
steady stream of bullets into the Fokker. The other 
two were behind him, and he could see their tracer 


50 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

bullets streaking by his face. But his one thought 
was of vengeance, and he kept after the Fokker until 
it fell in flames. 

“ That was number one, but it was not enough for 
him. 

“ ‘He made a quick bank and turn and dashed at 
one of the other two planes that had been behind 
him. Another fierce burst of fire, and it followed its 
comrade. 

“ ‘Number two! 

“ ‘The third German pilot turned tail and raced 
off as fast as he could go. 

“ ‘Still Luke was not satisfied. He hunted around 
for the other formation of six that had first stalked 
him. They were darting away in the distance. 

“ ‘But beyond, down to the north of Verdun, were 
small fleecy white clouds, Archie shells from our own 
Allied lines. The Allied anti-aircraft shells gave off 
a cloud of white smoke when they burst; the Ger¬ 
mans gave off black. 

“ ‘Luke darted in that direction. He saw five 
French Spads hurrying to attack an L. V. G. photo¬ 
graphing machine, which, probably, had already 
taken some photos behind the Allied lines which 
would be of service to the enemy. 

“ ‘The six Fokkers that had been the first to annoy 


CALAMITY JACK 51 

him, and that indirectly had been the means of the 
crashing of Wehrner were cutting in ahead of it to 
cover its retreat. The L. V. G. was just ahead of 
Luke as he came up. He swung down on it like a 
rocket, firing both guns. The photographing ma¬ 
chine fell into a tail spin and crashed near the old 
Verdun fiying-field. 

“ ‘Number three! 

“ ‘The six Fokkers turned and headed east. 

“ ‘Frank Luke, the Arizona high-school boy, in the 
short space of one afternoon, had shot down two 
balloons, two fighting Fokkers, and one two-seater 
enemy observation plane, a feat unequalled in the 
entire annals of the World War. But it gave him no 
feeling of triumph. Wehrner, his pal, was gone/ 

“For a few days he refused to go into the air, and 
took a week’s leave. He had earned it. Then, on 
September 26 , the opening day of the Argonne-Meuse 
offensive, he was recalled. 

“ ‘He seemed to have his old spirit once more. 
The next day he shot down a Hanoverian two- 
seater, and that evening got another balloon. 
He passed the night and the next day at a French 
flying-field. In the evening he flew over the Ameri¬ 
can Balloon Headquarters and dropped a weighted 
note: 


52 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

“ ‘ “Look out for enemy balloons at D -2 and D -4 
positions. — Luke.” 

“ They watched. A few minutes later, a great 
glow lit up the sky in the direction of the German 
lines, and then, quickly, another. The balloon offi¬ 
cers telephoned to the aerodrome, reporting Luke’s 
two new victories. 

“ That night he did not return, nor the next night. 
The squadron commander vowed that when he did 
come back he would recommend him for a court 
martial and then the Legion of Honor. 

“ ‘But they never saw Luke again! ’ ” 

“What had happened?” queried Jack. 

“No one on the American side knew until after the 
Armistice. But the people of the little town of 
Marvaux saw the end. Just after shooting down the 
two balloons that last night, Luke had suddenly ap¬ 
peared, flying low. It looked like a forced landing. 
He may have been wounded, or his engine been 
injured. 

“The town was full of German soldiers. He swept 
over the houses, almost touching them, and opened 
fire with his machine-gun on a detachment of troops 
in the village street, killing eleven and wounding 
many others. Then he swerved and landed in a 
field not far from a stream. He climbed out and 


CALAMITY JACK 53 

headed for the stream. It seemed as if he wanted 
to get water. 

“Several German soldiers made for him. He 
saw them and turned back to his ship to get his auto¬ 
matic. Shots rang out. He fell to the ground beside 
his plane. When the citizens of Marvaux came to 
take him to the local cemetery, they found a great 
wound in his chest. The Air Service built a monu¬ 
ment on his grave, after the War. In seventeen days 
he had shot down eighteen German aeroplanes and 
balloons, an unequalled record. He died America’s 
Ace of Aces — and little more than a boy, at that! ” 


CHAPTER IV 


RIDING THE STORM 

Calamity Jack looked thoughtful. This import- 
ance of captive ballons in war had never occurred to 
him. Like a good many people, he thought balloon¬ 
ing was just a circus performance, or else that it be¬ 
longed to the Middle Ages. 

“I suppose,” he said thoughtfully, “that’s why they 
still have those Gordon Bennet Cup races.” Then his 
natural grouch returned. “But they do seem like 
a fool thing, anyway.” 

Orvie retorted as he had done before. 

“If the big Powers think it worth while to send 
their best men to contest a race like that, it isn’t just 
for the fun of it. And if you are going to talk about 
the Gordon Bennet, don’t forget that it’s the U. S. 
Army which won the last race and got permanent 
possession of the trophy for America.” 

“Was it?” 

“It certainly was. Some of these days, Jack, I’m 
going to get nailed down in your head that the U. S. 
Army and Navy Aviators are at the top of the tree 
when it comes to heavier-than-air flying, but it won’t 

54 


RIDING THE STORM 


55 

do you any harm to hear how the Army won the last 
race, in the wildest kind of a storm, and with adven¬ 
tures enough to make a dime-novel thriller. Lieut. 
W. O. Eareckson * tells the story of that mad flight, 
himself. 

“At exactly 5 p. m. Eastern Standard time, May 
30,1928, a great throbbing sigh, followed by a ringing 
cheer, went up from the multitudinous assemblage 
gathered at Bettis Field, Pa., for it was then that, 
in the words of the programme: ‘the first racing bal¬ 
loon leapt into space*. 

“Einstein is right, apparently, on this relativity 
stuff. Everything is relative to something else, and 
it all depends on the point of view. Thus, quite 
contrary to the words of the enthusiastic programme 
scribe, one heavier-than-air Superman was heard to 
mutter, as this racing balloon soared overhead at 
the spanking clip of eight miles an hour: 

“ ‘By all the spark plugs, is that thing racing? 
Hey, buddy, don’t come too low! You might get 
run over by a snail! * 

“These two opinions being so diverse, a few words 
in explanation of a balloon race would be appropri¬ 
ate. As in the case of Aesop’s fable of the Tortoise 
and the Hare, the victory is not always to the speedy. 
There are other elements to consider. 

“Of course, to have any well-founded expectations 
of winning a race, the team in the balloon must be 
topnotch in the actual handling of their craft. But, 
in addition, they should know as much as possible of 
meteorology, have an intimate knowledge of naviga- 

* In “U. S. Air Services”, a most useful and excellent Aeronautical 
magazine. 


I 


56 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

tion, understand the theory of gases, and possess a 
good grade of old-fashioned grit. Unexpected things 
happen on any long free balloon flight, and it is well 
to be so constituted that you can always expect the 
worst with a tranquil mind, and be grinning when it 
happens. 

“The winner of a balloon race is the balloon which, 
when all the contestants have landed, is the farthest 
from the point of take-off, the distance being meas¬ 
ured on the arc of a Great Circle. 

“The weather on the day of the race had been 
cloudy with occasional showers accompanied by some 
mild thunder and lightning, and it was with a feeling 
of relief that we saw Old Sol break through the cumu¬ 
lus canopy and smile down about half an hour before 
the starting of the race. Beginning at five o’clock 
the balloons took off at five-minute intervals until 
all fourteen entrants were in the air and heading in a 
general easterly direction; the lower ones going a bit 
north of east, the higher ones a bit south of east. 

“Our balloon, the Army Entry No. 1, being in ninth 
position, took off at 5.45 p. m., and, flying low, headed 
up toward New England. We had hardly left the 
ground when we saw that directly ahead of us and 
about ten miles distant was a high-piled cumulus 
cloud form which issued ominous rumblings, flashes 
of lightning, and, as we found out later, rain, hail, 
death, and destruction. 

“Having been in storms before, we were not dis¬ 
mayed and even decided to stay low in order to save 
gas, run into the storm to gain speed, and stay with it 
until night caused it to dissipate. 

“We had not long to wait! 

“In about forty minutes our speed had picked up 
from eight miles an hour to twenty, we were directly 


RIDING THE STORM 


57 

under the cloud and starting to rise with the rising 
convection current which fed the cloud. Wishing to 
stay low, we valved, but continued to rise even more 
rapidly as the current became stronger. We reached 
our pressure height at 1000 feet and continued rising 
at a rate of from 800 to 2000 feet a minute, spilling 
gas as we went, until, at about 5000 feet, we began to 
descend as rapidly as we had climbed. 
f “And with us came the rain, in gobs and scads, 
rivulets and small waterfalls, while we whirled, ed¬ 
died, jostled, and spun in the most violent set of cross 
currents I have ever encountered, meanwhile being 
shocked when the lightning sizzled, and jolted when 
the thunder roared. 

“More or less expecting to be struck by lightning, 
we put on our parachutes when we entered the clouds, 
and, figuring that if we were, we might be stunned 
rather than killed, we took this precaution: sitting on 
the edge of the basket, gripping a rope and leaning 
outwards with our centres of gravity well out in 
space, we tied strings from the rip-rings of our para¬ 
chutes to the basket suspension ropes so that, in case 
we were struck insensible, we should fall out of the 
balloon, our parachutes would open, and we should 
descend in one piece, rather than with the unmanned 
and probably burning balloon. 

“Thus we rose and descended until we left the 
cloud and saw the earth 1500 feet below. Then we 
got busy checking the descent of our craft. Alter¬ 
nately we poured sand, bag after bag, until we had 
poured twelve bags and checked our downward veloc¬ 
ity to 800 feet a minute. Then we cut loose our drag 
rope so that it hung down below us, and waited for 
the earth to come up and spank us. 

“While waiting, I had a chance to look around and 


58 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

saw balloons all about us, some of them performing 
the most undignified stunts, and all showing the loss 
of a third to one-half their gas. North-east, the 
Pittsburgher chased the Army Entry No. ^upa val¬ 
ley; north of us, Captain Honeywell sat like a huge 
stationary mushroom; from above, Van Orman and 
Morton started down, caught up with and flashed 
past us in a shower of sand as they cut bag after bag 
in a vain attempt to check their descent. We 
watched them strike, and up they came again like a 
rocket, disappearing in the cloud above. 

“Then we hit. 

“And how! 

“Hardly had we hit than the wind had us in its 
clutches, racing us over the ground, sometimes at 
velocities of from 50 to 60 miles an hour, while our 
static heaviness caused us to kiss Ma Earth every 
three or four hundred yards. There is nothing on 
earth more exhilarating than hedge-hopping in a free 
balloon at a high rate of speed. 

“We crashed through trees, fences, telegraph lines, 
always keeping the balloon statically heavy so we 
would lag behind the central fury of the storm by 
our friction over the earth, until, as we sped over a 
small rise, we found ourselves face to face with the 
worst menace to free ballooning — a high-tension 
power line. 

“With about 30,000 cubic feet of inflammable hy¬ 
drogen gas a bare ten feet above our heads; with 
every stitch of clothing and equipment soaking wet 
and oozing water; instruments, angel cake, ham 
sandwiches, and bananas in a sloppy chaos due to our 
violent bumps and hits against terrestrial obstacles; 
we sped at the rate of 50 miles an hour directly to¬ 
wards six power lines, each carrying about 50,000 


RIDING THE STORM 


59 


volts of electricity, and so placed that they would 
strike us just about three feet above the load-ring. 

“We knew that the instant any two wires were 
short-circuited, there would be a spark a yard or two 
long, and even the smallest spark would ignite the 
gas, thereby causing all young officers below us in 
seniority to gain two files on the promotion list. 

“What people do at such times is interesting . . . 
What we actually did was cuss, grab a double hand¬ 
ful of wet hemp, and set ourselves for the shock, were 
it to be dynamic, electrical, or thermal. 

“It was none of the three. 

“Just then Lady Luck tossed a horseshoe at the 
seats of each of our soggy trousers, and we went 
through the power line as through a yarn thread. 
Allah alone knows why, but there was no spark as 
we broke all six wires and kept moving toward where 
a railroad ran in the shade of a twelve-wire telegraph 
line. 

“Comparatively, that telegraph line was as harm¬ 
less as a black snake beside a rattler. It was less 
venomous, but it was stronger. 

“We hit it, crashed through eight wires, slid along 
the remaining four till we hit a pole, lifted the pole 
out of the ground, went on a few yards with the pole 
firmly wedged between two suspension cables, and 
came to a halt in a grove of trees on the edge of a 
stream. ‘And there we were ketched’ and thrashing 
around like a tom-cat in a croaker sack. 

“But our apparent misfortune was our salvation. 
The storm we were riding, though violent, was small 
— typically Napoleonic — and the five minutes we 
used in extricating ourselves from the spreading arms 
of the pole's cross-piece was sufficient to allow the 


60 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

storm to pass on. By the time we were free, the 
storm had left and was already abating. 

“Free of the pole, our next problem was the trees, 
and, this solved, we yet had to make ourselves stat¬ 
ically light enough to float in the air. This was ac¬ 
complished in a rather unique manner. 

“Around our basket we had placed, before the 
take-off, a rubberized fabric envelope, so that in case 
we landed in water, our basket would become a boat 
in which we could float for a time and remain dry. 
The rain reversed this process by placing the water 
inside the basket instead of outside, so that there we 
stood ankle deep in about 400 pounds of water. 

“This water had replaced the sand we expended 
during the storm and gave us a superfluity of ballast, 
besides. We knew that if we lost all the water, liter¬ 
ally the sky would be the limit of our altitude. We 
must lose some of this superfluity or stay put; but 
we must not lose it all. 

“What we did was this: Very carefully we cut a 
small slit in the envelope, well over in one corner of 
the basket. Then we stood over that hole, our 
weight tilting the basket that way until enough water 
had drained out to make us sufficiently light to take 
off. As we started to rise, we walked to the opposite 
corner, tilting the basket in the other direction. Our 
theory worked; the hole was above the remaining 
water which accompanied us as ballast. 

“Now that we were satisfied that we could fly, our 
attention turned to ourselves. Soaked to the skin, 
our food a total loss, we faced the already lowering 
night — which bid fair to be rather chilly — without 
too much enthusiasm. 

“The balloon, shedding water a bit faster than the 
contracting gas (due to increasing cold), lost lift, t 
needed no attention, but continued gradually to rise 


RIDING THE STORM 


61 


and drift slowly in a southeasterly direction. This 
gave us a chance to take off and wring out our cloth¬ 
ing which, being the driest we had, we put back on. 

“By this time we were at 5000 feet and our speed 
to the southeast had increased to fifteen miles an 
hour. 

“But, 0 Boy! it was cold!Our hands were shriv¬ 
elled from being wet, our lips were blue, and our 
teeth chattered like two skeletons with inflammatory 
rheumatism having chills on a tin roof. At 5200 feet 
it started to snow, and at 7400 feet, our maximum al¬ 
titude, ice began to form on the rigging in our drink¬ 
ing water, and on our clothing. But our speed stead¬ 
ily increased until it had reached about thirty miles 
an hour, and our spirits rose accordingly. 

“All through the night, which was alternately 
moonlit and overcast — depending upon whether we 
were above or below the clouds — we froze and 
thawed, freezing as we rose, thawing as we reached 
the warm stratum of air which extended to about 500 
feet above the tree-tops. As the night passed, we 
entertained each other by recalling experiences dur¬ 
ing which we had been the hottest. 

“The flight continued all through the night. The 
application of our knowledge of navigation rather 
lost itself by the wetness of our maps and our more 
or less natural mental apathy and physical inertia. 
Besides, when we moved, our bodies found previous 
untouched areas in our wet clothing, which, due to 
lack of contact, were surprisingly cold. 

“Our navigation, then, consisted in an occasional 
compass check of our direction, and conjuncture — 
from our general knowledge of the country — of 
what town that patch of lights might be, or what 
river that silver ribbon was. 

“And so on unendingly till morning, when, just as 


62 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 


the dawn broke, we drifted out over the Rappahan¬ 
nock River and became sufficiently alarmed to find 
the least sodden map and accurately check our lo¬ 
cation. 

“Our flight ended, due to the proximity of the At¬ 
lantic Ocean and the very commendable hesitancy 
on our part to dim Lindbergh’s glamour by making 
a trans-Atlantic flight in a free balloon. For these 
reasons, then, we landed at Weems, Va., rolled and 
packed our balloon, and the flight of Army Entry 
No. 1 was over. 

“It was not until we awoke some hours later that 
we learned about the storm-caused disaster, or that 
we had won the race by exactly a mile and a half 
farther than the Barmen, the German entry, having 
made 460.9 miles in that tempestuous night. But 
our elation at winning was overshadowed by our sor¬ 
row at having lost forever the comradeship of two 
real men, two regular buddies, Evert and Morton, 
both killed by the storm we had safely passed 
through.” 

“We won, anyway!” was Jack’s comment. “But 
I’m surprised the Germans sent a free balloon. I 
thought they had only built Zeppelins, and none of 
them since the War. They were all shot down, too.” 

“Nonsense! Never heard of the Los Angeles and 
the Dixmude? They were German Zepps. I won’t 
bother you with the story of the Zepps in the War, 
because they didn’t worry us, much, and the good 
old U. S. A. is what interests me most. 

“The story of the Zeppelins after the War doesn’t 


RIDING THE STORM 63 

take long to tell. After the Armistice, the latest 
Zepp under construction for the German Navy was 
the L-72. The Zepp Company decided to fly the ship 
to America, in the hope of holding its big construc¬ 
tion company together and starting a post-war trans- 
Atlantic passenger and commercial service. Don’t 
forget — that was ten years ago. It might have 
worked, for the L-72 was as big as the Los Angeles and 
not so heavy. Everything was ready for a flight to 
New York in April 1919, but the Inter-Allied Com¬ 
mission forbade it. Eight weeks later the British 
R-34 flew from England to Mineola, L. I., the first 
aircraft to make a non-stop trans-Atlantic flight. 

“But before we come to the commercial end of it, 
Jack, take a look at what happened to the Zepps 
which Germany still had at the end of the war. 
Early in 1919 the Allies agreed that Germany, as 
‘a conquered nation in an aggressive war’ should sur¬ 
render her battle fleet. You remember that the 
Germans did so, and then sunk all their ships in the 
anchorage off the Scotch coast. It was a prear¬ 
ranged plan.” 

“Well, in my opinion — ” began Jack. 

“You haven’t any,” was Orvie’s retort. “Nor 
have 1 — we were in the infant class, then. The 
Germans did it, anyway. Now the Zepps, during 


64 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

the War, were officially attached to the German 
Navy. Under the same prearranged plan, the same 
day that the vessels were sinking at Scapa Flow, the 
L-14, 41, 62, and 65 at the headquarters at Nordholz, 
and the L-52 and 56 at Wittmund were destroyed by 
the simple system of cutting the overhead cable 
which held them and letting them fall to the ground 
into a tangled mass of metal. They were not in¬ 
flated, of course.” 

“What a shame!” 

“It certainly was a heavy loss. But, in reprisal, 
the Allies demanded that the remaining seven Zep¬ 
pelins should be surrendered to them, as well as the 
two new commercial ships, the Bodensee and the 
Nordstern which the Germans had built since the end 
of the war. Let’s follow their history a bit. 

“The L-72, the LZ-118, and the Nordstern went to 
France. The LZ-118 was dismantled. The L-72 
was renamed the Dixmude, and the world’s record 
endurance flight was made with her, over the Medi¬ 
terranean in 1923. A few weeks later, while making 
another flight, something happened to her up aloft — 
no one ever knew what or why — and she drifted for 
days, at one time over the Sahara, at another over 
the sea. Her end is still a mystery, though the bodies 
of her captain and a few members of the crew were 


RIDING THE STORM 65 

washed up on the shore of Sicily. She may have 
been struck by lightning. 

“The Italians got the L-61 and the LZ-120. They 
didn’t last long in Italian hands. The LZ-120 was 
ruined during inflation in her hangar. As for the 
she was smashed up beyond repair in the very 
first landing that the Italians attempted. 

“The British got the L-OIf. and the L-71. The first 
of these was dismantled — for experimental purpose, 
it was said — and the L-71, much better handled by 
the British than their two were by the Italians, was 
used for flying and hangar tests and for training. She 
still exists, but is not fit for extended flying. Of 
course, that’s some time ago, and a Zepp’s life is never 
a long one. 

The L-20 went to Belgium, and the L-S7 went in 
parts to Japan. Belgium, as a neutral country, 
never flew her ship; Japan used hers for a study of 
the principles of Zeppelin building. That was the 
end of the last of the war Zeppelins.” 

“But where did America come in?” 

“She didn’t. I’ll come to that in a minute. The 
Bodensee proved a good commercial ship — this was 
ten years ago, I repeat! In the fall of 1919, she made 
103 flights in 98 days, twice crossing the Baltic to 
Stockholm. But, although the Bodensee had proved 


66 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 


her daily reliability in Germany, the Italians, having 
neither trained Zeppelin navigators nor crews, could 
do nothing with her. The Nordstern was almost 
completed at the end of 1919, but had not left her 
hangar. The French, who got her after she was 
completed, left her to rust away; they hadn’t trained 
Zepp crews, either. 

“But the U. S. A. was left out in the cold. That 
wasn’t the fault of the Allied Commission, for it had 
offered America the pick of the Zepps. But there 
were no hangars big enough for the huge airships in 
America, the U. S. Government had never taken the 
trouble to investigate the real war record of the 
Zepps, and there wasn’t thirty cents’ worth of public 
interest in them. In fact, they were popularly dis¬ 
liked. So our representatives declined. 

“But, a little later, in 1920, according to the state¬ 
ments of Captain Lehmann — the world’s Zepp 
authority and navigating officer of the Graf Zeppelin 
on her famous 1928 cruise to America — an American 
Army airship officer went to Germany and arranged 
by secret contract for the Zeppelin Company to build 
for America the biggest craft yet. The news leaked 
out. And, as the United States was still legally at 
war with Germany, the Government couldn’t ap¬ 
prove the deal. So we lost that. 


RIDING THE STORM 


67 

“Then Great Britain entered the field and built 
two giant ships, the R-37 and R-88. When they were 
nearly completed, however, the British realized that 
while building an airship is one of the most expensive 
performances on earth — in proportion to its possible 
value — running one is scarcely less costly. The 
British taxpayer was not easy in his mind over this 
expenditure. The R-88 was offered to the United 
States and accepted at a purchase price of fifteen mil¬ 
lion dollars.” 

“Whew!” whistled Jack. “They do come high!” 

“The R-88 certainly did,” agreed Orvie, “but not in 
the way you mean. Some of the very best of the air¬ 
ship men in America: Commander Maxfield, and 
Lieutenant-Commanders Coil, Bieg, and Byrd, went 
over to take part with the pick of the British officers 
and men to fly her back. By fluke — or fate — Byrd 
missed a morning train and so was not aboard the 
R-38 — rechristened the ZR-2 — on her famous trial 
flight in England. 

“That flight was hoodooed from the start. Com¬ 
mander Maxfield was dissatisfied, but, as the ship 
hadn’t been officially turned over, it was not his place 
to make any remarks until after the trial flight. 
Coil, who had married an English girl just before, had 
told her that he was sure there was something wrong 


68 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

with the ship. He was right. Medical Officer Tay¬ 
lor told Byrd that one of the enlisted men had come to 
him the day before saying that he dreamed that the 
ship had exploded over the Humber River. 

“Shortly after daylight she took the air, and sailed 
away majestically. She got off without a hitch. 
She was to cruise all day and all night and then to 
hitch to a specially prepared mooring mast. 

“The ZR-2 was about 1200 feet above the Humber 
River, having successfully completed all her tests for 
speed, and was being tried out for quick turns when 
the extreme helm put too great a strain on her longi¬ 
tudinals, she broke her back, and crumpled just abaft 
the rear engine cars. Fire broke out at once. The 
explosion came immediately after. The forward end 
of the ship fell straight down and disappeared under 
the water; the rear end floated a while, and three men 
were rescued. Coil was found dead near frame ten, 
the section which he had told Byrd he thought to be 
weak. Maitland was found with his hand on the 
controls. The man who had dreamed of the explo¬ 
sion was dead. Out of the fifty men aboard, five only 
lived, one of the five an American enlisted man. The 
biggest tragedy in the history of peace-time 
aviation!” 

“What I told you!” grumbled Calamity Jack. 


RIDING THE STORM 69 

“Airships haven’t had much luck in America,” 
Orvie went on. “The U. S. Army purchased an Ital¬ 
ian semi-rigid ship, the Roma , but, on her trial flight 
from Langley Field, Va., she struck a high tension 
cable when flying low, and she, too, came down in 
flames. All this, Jack, was in the days when in¬ 
flammable hydrogen gas was used — we use helium, 
now. It hasn’t as much lift, but it’s not nearly so 
dangerous. 

“Now, you remember that the Germans had de¬ 
stroyed seven of their Zeppelins. Whatever may be 
said about the voluntary sinking of the German 
fleet, after delivery, it was certain that the Germans 
had not lived up to the terms of the treaty in destroy¬ 
ing these Zepps before delivery. They had to make 
good. America’s share was to be a new Zeppelin 
built to her orders. It wasn’t a very big one. This 
was the Los Angeles , built in Germany, and in 1924 
she flew perfectly from Friedrichshafen to Lakehurst, 
N. J., in 81 hours. 

“ The Shenandoah , however, built in America, was 
earlier in the air than the Los Angeles . She made 
good, flying from New Jersey to the Pacific Coast 
and back. In January 1924, while riding at her 
mooring-mast in Lakehurst, she broke away in a 
storm and battled the tempest for eight hours, getting 


70 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

back at last to her mooring-mast when the wind 
lulled. But this probably strained her. 

“Anyhow, two years less than a day from the time 
that she first took the air, the Shenandoah was or¬ 
dered to St. Louis. She left the mast, glided along 
safely in fair weather, then struck a storm over Ohio. 
The squall had tornado force in the upper air, and 
whirled the huge airship up like a shuttlecock, throw¬ 
ing her to seven thousand feet in one wild rush. 
There, cross-currents took her. She shook and 
writhed like a snake in the teeth of a mongoose. A 
minute of that was enough. The Shenandoah began 
to go to pieces. The control gondola was wrenched 
off and fell like a bomb, killing Commander Lans- 
downe and twelve officers and men. 

“With a rending scream, the storm just simply tore 
the ship in two as you might tear an envelope. The 
nose-part bounded upwards out of sight. The after¬ 
part contained most of the rest of the crew, and, by 
valving the gas, they managed to make a parachute 
sort of landing, only one man being killed. 

“But the nose-part, having no car to give her 
gravity, pitched and tossed and spun around like a 
soap-bubble. The men on it scrambled up into the 
girders and hung on as they could, as often upside 
down as not, for the nose whirled about like a child’s 


RIDING THE STORM 


7 i 

toy balloon. But the squall passed and this section 
of the Shenandoah came to earth without any further 
fatality. Fourteen had been killed and one injured 
out of forty-three. And that was the end of the 
Shenandoah” 

“It doesn’t make me any more anxious to start fly¬ 
ing!” commented Calamity Jack. “As you tell it, 
the most horrible things you can think of happen in 
the air. In a smash-up on land, there you are, but 
when it is ’way up in the sky, where are you? Solid 
earth is plenty good enough for me for a while 
longer.” 

“Perhaps not. But the story doesn’t end there. 
The latest event in airship history is the visit to 
America of the LZ-127 or the Graf Zeppelin, which, 
in spite of having struck bad weather on her way 
across and having injured a side fin, thereby having 
been forced to take a roundabout course of 6300 
miles, flew from Germany in 111 hours, carrying her 
full crew of forty and a passenger list of twenty — 
the first crossing of the Atlantic by a passenger-carry¬ 
ing airship. Not only that, but she flew back to 
Germany successfully. 

“And yet, Jack, huge as she is, and successful as was 
her trip, she’s only 3,700,000 cubic feet and will look 
like a baby beside the two new 6,500,000 monsters of 


72 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

the U. S. Navy. They’re to be American-built and 
American-manned, and I shouldn’t be surprised to 
find the first round-the-world airship record won by a 
U. S. crew.” 

“You’re dreaming, Orvie!” 

“Maybe I am. But I don’t see why I shouldn’t. 
We’ve certainly got a mighty big handful of world’s 
records in the airplane line!” 



The ZR-2, Leaving the Ground for the Trial Flight. 








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CHAPTER V 


WHAT IS AN AIRPLANE? 

“See here, Orvie,” said his father to him, a couple 
of months after the crashing of their plane and the 
parachute drop which had saved both their lives, 
“I've got something important to talk to you about. 
YouVe been playing about with airplane engines ever 
since you were big enough to know the difference be¬ 
tween them and a steam-roller, haven’t you?” 

“Almost, Father.” 

“And you fancy you’re a pretty good mechanic?” 

“You’ve said I was, for my age.” 

“You are, so far as that goes, though you’ve a pile 
to learn, yet. Now, as you know, I half-promised 
your mother that the first time I crashed, with you 
aboard, even if we escaped injury, that would be my 
last flight. She’s superstitious and thinks that if 
I escaped a smash-up in all my war-flying, I oughtn’t 
to risk it now.” 

“But flying’s ten times safer than it was in the 
war!” 

“Of course it is, but you’ll have a hard time making 

73 


74 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

your mother see it. She’s been worrying me, lately, 
to promise that I’ll do my best to keep you out of the 
flying business.” 

“You didn’t promise, did you, Father?” queried 
Orvie, anxiously. 

“No, Son, I didn’t. You’ve got the flying sense, 
to start with; your heart is in it, for another thing ; 
and it’s not only a growing business but also the na¬ 
tion’s first line of defence. I told your mother, on 
the contrary, that I was going to do my best to make 
you a thorough airman, not merely a barnstormer 
pilot.” 

“I’m glad of that, Father! And there is a real fu¬ 
ture in flying, I’m dead sure.” 

“No doubt of it. Now, while I’ve been wondering 
what would be the best way to start you, for you’re 
too young to get into the business in the ordinary 
way, a chance drops out of the blue sky—just the 
way for it to come.” 

“For me?” 

“For you! A very good opportunity, too. Do 
you remember Matt Logan?” 

“Your old flying pal, Father, who told us all those 
hunting stories last autumn?” 

“That’s the man!” 

“Of course I remember him! He sent me a couple 


WHAT IS AN AIRPLANE? 75 

of gemsbok horns as a trophy. Eve got them up in 
my room now, and never shall forget how proud I 
was to have them.” 

“So you have, Son; I’d forgotten about them. He 
took a fancy to you, I remember, and doesn’t seem to 
have forgotten it. I suppose that’s because you’re 
naturally a good shot and keen on flying, and those 
are the only two things he cares about. Well, I’ve 
just had a letter from him. He writes, half-humor- 
ously, to know if you’ve invented yet that new engine 
you were talking to him about, and if you’re as mad 
as ever over fixing up old ones.” 

“Just as mad,” said Orvie, grinning. “Madder, if 
anything.” 

“But there’s a serious note back of Logan’s letter, 
too. He wants to do some big-game hunting up in 
the Hudson Bay country, this summer, and would 
like to take with him a mechanic-pilot who has some 
hunting gumption of his own. How would that suit 
you?” 

“Oh, Father; I’d like the chance!” 

“I thought you would. Well, it might be a good 
chance for you. Logan is a first-class pilot — one of 
the best — and is a fair mechanic, besides, though he 
hates to handle a monkey-wrench — some folks are 
made that way. Now, you really like tools. I re- 


76 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

member your trying to unscrew a propeller hub outer 
nut when you were only seven years old.” 

“Without taking out the cotter-pin,” admitted the 
boy, laughing. 

“Yes,” agreed his father drily, “so there wasn’t 
much danger that you’d succeed. And you were 
talking piston displacements when most youngsters 
of your age thought of nothing but batting averages. 

“But merely being interested in engines doesn’t 
make you a mechanic, Orvie, and still less does it 
make you a ‘trouble-shooter,’ and that’s what Logan 
wants. He can pilot a plane with half the wing shot 
off and no rudder and still make a safe landing — he 
did that very thing in the Argonne, during the War 
— but I wouldn’t trust him to inspect a sewing- 
machine for me, much less an airplane engine. And 
if the insulation on half his wires were worn off, he’d 
never notice it.” 

“I see,” said Orvie. “He wants some one to go 
over his engine after every flight — regular inspec¬ 
tion stuff. That’s a responsibility!” added the boy 
gravely. 

“It is!” 

“Why doesn’t he take a regular mechanic?” 

“Because he wants some one who knows a bit about 
camping, and who can hit a barn-door at twenty yards 


WHAT IS AN AIRPLANE? 77 

with a shot-gun. You’re an Eagle Scout, aren’t 
you?” 

“Right!” said the boy proudly, “I got my Eagle, 
the youngest chap in the State!” 

“And I know, myself, that you can shoot. Logan 
knows what he’s about. You see, he’ll do all the fly¬ 
ing himself, especially if he’s carrying passengers, 
for you’re too young to get a full pilot’s license. But 
it’s a good thing to have some one in the cockpit who 
can handle the controls, if necessary. And while 
Indian guides can handle most of the camping stuff, 
they couldn’t overhaul an engine.” 

The boy nodded. 

“It sounds fine, Father! But I don’t think I know 
enough.” 

“You certainly don’t! But three months of an 
Air Mechanic’s Course in a first-rate flying school 
will make all the difference. There isn’t any age 
limit for the mechanical side. And you might take 
up Air Engineering, afterwards; mathematics doesn’t 
seem to bother you.” 

“No. It’s History and English, and that sort of 
thing that I make a mess of, at school. And I can’t 
seem to get the hang of Latin, at all! What use is 
it, anyway?” 

“More than you think, Son. But if you go into 


78 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

flying for a living, you won’t need Latin much. 
You’ll need other things, though. If I send you to 
Hying School ’way younger than the usual age, 
they’ll be apt to ask you a lot of questions, just to 
find out if you’ve got the simpler principles of aero¬ 
statics and aerodynamics clearly in your head. A 
Flying School isn’t exactly an Infant Class.” 

“What sort of questions, Father?” 

“Well, things like this: What’s the difference in 
principle of flight between an airship and an air¬ 
plane?” 

“I could answer that,” said Orvie, promptly. “An 
airship depends on buoyancy, hydrogen or helium be¬ 
ing lighter than air; a gas-bag filled with hydrogen 
is lighter than the volume of air which it displaces 
and so it rises, or is sustained in the air. That’s the 
same principle as a ship, the hull of which, being 
filled with air, is sustained by the heavier medium, 
water. 

“An airplane works more like something on land. 
Air weighs 13 cubic feet to the pound. It has a cer¬ 
tain definite resistance. By exposing a flat surface 
at high speed to the air, the resulting resistance of 
the air gives a solid reaction, so that the wing of a 
plane is supported by the air, just as the wheel of a 
wagon is supported by the ground.” 


WHAT IS AN AIRPLANE? 


79 


“Why isn’t the wing of a plane flat, then?” 

“Because a flat wing would make a swirl of air be¬ 
hind it, with a resulting suction, which would drag 
the plane backwards and check its speed. Mr. Lo¬ 
gan explained that to me, one day, when I showed 
him an aeroplane model I was making. Wings are 
curved or cambered, though the camber differs in 
different makes of plane. That, he said, was be¬ 
cause all the rest of the machine was built in propor- 
tion. Some planes have wings much flatter than 
others.” 

“So far so good,” said his father. “You have the 
hang of that, all right. Now, suppose a sudden gust 
of wind should come under the wing of a plane, say 
at the minute you speed into a squall and are climb¬ 
ing. Wouldn’t that drive up the wing to so sharp 
an angle that the plane would shoot up like a rocket?” 

“First place, it wouldn’t shoot up. A plane isn’t 
a rocket. It would reach the ‘burbling point’, or the 
angle at which a plane won’t climb.” 

“As you like. But about the squall?” 

“A sudden gust would try to lift a plane up, right 
away, and it would, too, if it wasn’t for the tail,” the 
boy answered. “The Wrights found that out, long 
ago, and they experimented with extra sets of gliders, 
both before and behind. But behind proved to be 


80 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

better. The tail of a modern plane has horizontal 
fins, like small wings, and — ” 

“Why are they so much smaller than the main 
wings?” 

“Oh, my model-making taught me that,” replied 
Orvie confidently. “Don’t forget I got second prize, 
last year, in the State contest! ” 

“Well, what did it teach you?” 

“The tail-fins are so far behind the main wings — 
no, that’s wrong! — they are so far behind the center 
of gravity, I meant to say, that they act like a sort 
of lever, the fulcrum of the lever being nearer the 
wings than the tail. If a gust sends the wings up at 
a slope, the tail points down. Since it points down, 
it presents itself to the wind, and the wind slaps it 
up, bringing the nose down again. The same thing 
happens when the wings point down suddenly; the 
tail comes up and the wind knocks it level again. If 
it wasn’t for the tail, a plane might easily be blown 
up to too steep a climbing angle, and it would stall. 
Then comes a tail drop.” 

“Do you know just what a ‘stall’ is?” 

“Pretty much the same thing as a ‘stall’ on a motor¬ 
car, isn’t it? A flivver stalls on a steep hill because 
the power of the motor isn’t big enough to force the 
weight of the car up against the downward pull of 


WHAT IS AN AIRPLANE? 


81 


gravity. If I’ve got the idea right, the steepness of 
the hill reaches a point where the pull of gravity is 
exactly equal to the power of the motor, and when the 
initial impulse is checked by friction, these two forces 
balance. Isn’t that it? The explosive force in the 
cylinders of the engine is no longer strong enough to 
drive down the pistons against the combined check 
of friction and gravity, and the engine stops or stalls. 

“In the air, much the same sort of thing happens. 
If the nose of the plane is pointed too high, that is, 
if it’s going up too steep a hill, gravity gets a big drag 
on it, the engine can’t develop enough power to make 
speed enough to increase the resistance at that angle, 
and the machine starts to drop. The plane loses 
speed, and as it’s speed which makes the air resistant 
enough to act like a solid, the slowed-up plane isn’t 
held up any longer. 

“In a way, it’s something like trying to drive a tin 
Lizzie up an ice toboggan-run. The engine might go 
on, but the wheels wouldn’t grip. It’s a different 
kind of insufficiency of support, but it acts the same. 
Even on an ordinary hill, a car would run downwards 
after stalling, if it wasn’t for the brakes.” 

“And aren’t there any brakes on a plane?” 

This sounded like a catch, but Orvie answered, 

“None. At least,” he added more cautiously, “no 


82 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

mechanical brakes, though, lately, slots in the wings 
are being used to check stalls. I don’t see how there 
could be any real brakes — unless something devel¬ 
ops out of the Auto-Gyro principle. After all, the 
car doesn’t make the earth solid enough to hold it, 
the earth is solid already; but an airplane has to make 
the air solid by its speed, and the faster it goes, the 
more solid the air becomes.” 

“Prove it!” 

Orvie pondered a minute or two. He knew the 
principle, but he had never tried to put it into words, 
and it was hard to meet the challenge. 

“It’s hard to explain, Father,” he said at last, “but 
it’s easy to see how it works in taking off. Suppose 
there’s a 20-mile wind blowing across a landing-field. 
If I taxi at 40 miles an hour, with the wind, and try 
to take off, I won’t do it; I’ll hit a tree, or a fence, or 
a telegraph-pole, or something.” 

“Why?” 

“Because, although I’m going 40 miles an hour in 
relation to the ground, I’m only going 20 miles an 
hour in the air, because the air is going 20 miles an 
hour in the same direction, and it’s on the air that 
I’ve got to climb. But if I taxi 40 miles an hour 
across the field against the same wind, I’ll take off 
easy, because the wind’s 20-mile speed is added to 


WHAT IS AN AIRPLANE? 83 

my 40-mile speed, so that I’m going 60 miles an hour 
against the air.” 

“And how does that make the air solid, when it 
is such a yielding substance?” 

“Solidity is resistance, isn’t it, Father? You can 
walk and not feel the air in a calm, you’ve got to 
battle against a strong wind, but a hurricane will 
drive you backwards. The air has become solid 
enough to act as though some solid thing were pushing 
you. Very few hurricanes ever reach as high as 100 
miles an hour, and an airplane flies 120 and more. 
The wings, then, are actually gliding on a solid air- 
surface, like the wheels of an automobile on solid 
ground.” 

His father smiled. 

“I don’t know whether a Professor of Aerodyna¬ 
mics would be entirely satisfied with that explana¬ 
tion,” he said, “but the principle of the thing is there. 
You’ll learn about resistance coefficients, later. All 
right, you say it’s the pressure of air on the tail which 
keeps an airplane level, or stable on its horizontal 
axis. Now what keeps it level on its lateral axis?” 

“I don’t think I understand it, quite,” the boy ad¬ 
mitted. “So far as I can make out, it’s a question of 
the design of the wings, being made up of the Angle 
of Incidence, or ‘rake’ of the wing, and the camber or 


84 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

curve of the wing, the whole forming a center of air- 
pressure which must be figured out in relation to all 
the other parts of the plane. Both wings, of course, 
must be rigidly the same in size and angle. You ex¬ 
plained that to me, one day, when the warping of a 
strut threw one of our wings the teeniest bit off.” 

“Is a big wing more stable than a little one?” 

“Yes, in horizontal flying. But I suppose the size 
of wings must be proportioned to weight and speed 
to the fraction of an inch.” 

His father nodded in approval. 

“If you’ve learnt how scrupulously exact every¬ 
thing has got to be in airplane designing,” he said, 
“you’ve made a good start. Lateral stability not 
only means stability in horizontal flying, but the 
power to regain stability from all sorts of slips and 
slides and spins. Is there any other kind of stability 
to bother with?” 

“There’s vertical or normal axis stability,” said 
Orvie promptly. “That’s a kind of normal center of 
gravity at a given middle point of the plane, by which 
it can turn either right or left, up or down, with equal 
ease and speed.” 

“Very good. But, so far, there’s nothing to pre¬ 
vent a plane from rolling first to one side and then the 
other. You’ve got enough stability to keep her level, 


WHAT IS AN AIRPLANE? 85 

once you’re going level, but, if she starts to roll, what’s 
going to stop her?” 

Orvie looked at his father in puzzled bewilder¬ 
ment. 

“I’d never thought of that! ” he explained. “There 
must be something else.” Then, after a minute’s 
hard thinking. “No, I don’t know.” 

“Good thing I ran over these first principles with 
you, Son! This is important, and goes far to make 
an airplane fool-proof. Think! If you stretched a 
string from wing-tip to wing-tip, would the string lie 
flat all along the wing, in other words, are the tip-ends 
and the fuselage-ends of a wing level?” 

“Not by a long shot!” ejaculated the boy. “The 
ends are always higher than the middle, sometimes a 
lot, sometimes only a little, according to the make of 
the plane.” 

“Why?” 

“I never stopped to think.” 

“Well, think now. The wings slope upwards from 
fuselage to tip at an angle which engineers call a 
dihedral angle. The principle is very simple. Sup¬ 
pose a machine with flat wings is rolling, there’s not 
* 

a very great deal of difference in air pressure between 
the left wing and the right wing. Suppose a machine 
with sharply dihedrally angled wings is rolling. By 


86 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

the time the left wing is parallel with the ground, the 
right wing has taken an oblique angle to the ground 
which presents less resistance. That forces the left 
wing up, and if it goes too far, the right wing will do 
the same thing. Of course, a modern airplane is so 
accurately balanced that this inherent stability and 
correction begins to act before ever the pilot is aware 
of the slightest roll.” 

“Why didn’t I think of it, myself!” exclaimed 
Orvie, in disgust. 

“It took keen engineers a good many years of ex¬ 
periment before inherent stability was found,” said 
his father, consolingly. “Now, let’s get on. We’ve 
got a machine inherently stable on its three axes, 
longitudinal, lateral, and normal or vertical. What 
sends it up or down?” 

“A hinged flap on the tail, the elevator. It’s 
worked by the joy-stick.” 

“How does it work?” 

“If you pull it back towards you, the plane goes 
up; and if — ” 

“I don’t mean that. What’s the principle of it, 
Orvie?” 

“Oh, I see. When the hinged flap, or elevator, is 
up, that reduces by the amount of its surface the air 
pressure on the under side of the tail, and adds it to 


WHAT IS AN AIRPLANE? 87 

the upper side, decreasing the normal downward pres¬ 
sure on the nose, and the angle of incidence of the 
wings drives the plane up. If, the other way, the 
elevator is pulled down, its angle gives a greater air- 
pressure on the under side of the tail, thus overcom¬ 
ing the climbing effect of the angle of incidence of the 
wings, and the plane goes downwards.” 

“Now, if you want to go to right or left?” 

“There’s the rudder, generally worked by a foot- 
control.” 

“And what is that?” 

“Another hinged flap on the tail, only vertical in¬ 
stead of horizontal. It acts a good deal like the 
mizzen or sternmost sail of a sailing ship.” 

“Is that enough to keep a plane on a straight 
course?” 

“Yes.” 

“Is it? And suppose your plane strikes a bump in 
the air and starts to yaw, veering from right to left, 
have you got to correct it with the rudder all the 
time?” 

“Yes! . . . No! . . . Let me think a minute 
. . . Oh, I remember now, I found that out when I 
was making a model, once. No, it isn’t enough. I 
was forgetting ‘weathercock stability’.” 

“And what’s that, do you know?” 


88 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

“Yes, the boy who got first prize explained it to me. 
It’s done with a fixed vertical tail-fin, so that if a 
plane yaws to the right, that brings the vertical tail- 
fin at an angle to the wind on the left, and the wind 
smacks it back into place; and vice versa.” 

“But suppose the wind were on the side, on the 
beam, as sailors would say, what then?” 

“But it couldn’t be, Father!” 

“What couldn’t be?” 

“The wind. In an airplane the wind is always 
dead ahead.” 

“Why?” 

“Let’s think. Oh, yes. It’s because an airplane 
is always going faster than any wind that blows, so 
it makes its own wind by the resistance of the air 
it’s going through. That’s why the wind is always 
dead ahead, even if the air itself is a perfect calm.” 

“Very good indeed, Orvie. Now, let’s go a bit 
farther on these elementary principles. Suppose 
you’re flying a good speed, horizontally, and you want 
to turn to the left; would it be enough to turn the 
rudder, as you would on an ocean-going ship?” 

“Oh, no! You’d side-slip right away! ” 

“What’s a side-slip?” 

Orvie thought for a minute or two. He knew what 
it was, very well, having got into that trouble once or 


WHAT IS AN AIRPLANE? 89 

twice before, but it was clear that he had never put 
the question to himself. 

“Why,” he said slowly, “I suppose it’s like an auto¬ 
mobile skidding when making a sharp turn.” 

“Explain a bit more, Son.” 

“Well, the air is always sort of slippery. Ah, I 
see, now! It’s like those velodromes built for fast 
motor-cycle racing. They’re built like a bowl. The 
angle of the inside is made so that the faster you go, 
the steeper is the angle, and gravity counteracts cen¬ 
trifugal force.” 

“Partly correct, Son, but not quite. Try again.” 

“It means, too,” the boy continued, “that when a 
motor-cyclist is going round a turn fast, the machine 
must lean over, and he’d slip unless the angle of the 
tire was kept at exactly right angles to the surface of 
the track. I get it! The motor-cycle is really doing 
a Tank’, or the track is doing it for the motor-cycle. 
With an airplane, when making a turn, the whole 
machine has got to be tilted, more or less sharply ac¬ 
cording to the closeness of the turn, so as to present 
a full wing-surface to the air. 

“How is that done?” 

“With the ailerons.” 

“And what are they?” 

“Hinged flaps on the wing-tips on each side of the 


9 o WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

fuselage, or body of the plane, so fixed that when the 
one lifts on one wing, the aileron on the opposite side 
of the wing is lowered. That increases pressure on 
one side and diminishes it on the other, so that the 
plane heels over.” 

“Of itself?” 

“No. The pilot has to do that himself by tilting 
the joy-stick to right or to left. The angle of the 
bank has got to be determined by the sharpness of 
the turn to be taken. A slow turn requires very little 
bank, but a very sharp turn means that the wings will 
be pointing to the earth, or nearly.” 

“Suppose you bank too much for a slow turn?” 

“That means a side-slip inwards.” 

“Why?” 

“That’s a sort of skidding, too,” the boy replied, 
thoughtfully. “It means that the angle has gone 
beyond the right position of wing-surface to the 
pressure of the air.” 

“And does every side-slip mean a crash?” 

“No! You side-slip, on purpose, ever so often!” 

“What for?” 

“To get down into a small landing-field, to—oh, 
lots of things.” 

“Yes, Son, but if ever you take a notion to side-slip, 
don’t leave recovery until you’re too near the ground. 


WHAT IS AN AIRPLANE? 


9i 

And, as you know, all sorts of aerobatics are safer at 
3000 feet up than 300 feet up. But we’re not talking 
about flying, now, merely the principles of flight. 
There’s just one point more that you’re not likely to 
know, and that is that the angle of the tail upwards 
must be at a smaller angle than the angle of incidence 
of the wings. Can you tell why?” 

“That’s a sort of dihedral angle, too, isn’t it?” 

“Exactly. It’s a longitudinal dihedral angle, and 
gives fore and aft stability. And with the exception 
of proper streamlining and shape of fuselage, that’s 
about all there is to the principles of stable flight 
design in a modern airplane. All there is, Son, but 
when you begin to work those principles into actual 
design, and to realize the enormous complexity of the 
calculations which so delicately poised a thing as an 
airplane requires, the thing which will amaze you is 
how the modern plane has developed to its present 
almost fool-proof stability so fast. Now a word or 
two as to the engine, though I know you’re pretty 
good on that. What’s the main reason of Man’s con¬ 
quest of the air?” 

“The gasoline engine! The Wright Brothers flew 
first, because they were the first to get a light one. 
Even that weighed 12 pounds per horse-power.” 

“And now?” 


92 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

“We’ve got engines weighing less than 1 pound per 
horse-power and developing 1000 horse-power.” 

“Wherein do they differ in principle from an ordi¬ 
nary automobile engine?” 

“They don’t. They’re lighter, ever so much more 
strongly made, balanced to the nth degree, and may 
be either water-cooled or air-cooled. Most of the 
air-cooled engines, though, are of the radial type, 
such as the Wright Whirlwinds’, which Lindbergh 
and Chamberlin used in their trans-Atlantic flights, 
and Byrd and Wilkins in their Polar voyages. The 
Army and the Navy use a lot of Pratt and Whitney 
Wasp’ and ‘Hornet’ engines.” 

“What do you mean by a radial engine?” 

“It means that the cylinders are arranged radially 
around a circular crank-case and all the piston rods 
operate on a single crank of the crankshaft. But 
there are a lot of line cylinders, V’s, W’s, and X’s 
mainly water-cooled, like the Curtiss, Packard, and a 
lot more. The one I like best — ” 

“May not be the one you like next year,” inter¬ 
rupted his father. “Aircraft engines are developing 
all the time. I don’t say they’re perfect, yet, but 
pretty nearly so. And the best of them are good for 
250 hours’ continuous running, which would take a 
plane around the world in a non-stop flight. Ameri- 


WHAT IS AN AIRPLANE? 93 

can engines were the first to cross the Atlantic in a 
non-stop flight, and the first to reach the Pole.” 

“Perhaps the non-stop round-the-world is waiting 
for me to do!” quoth Orvie. 

“I wouldn’t try it right away, if I were you,” said 
his father, smiling. “You’ll have to figure out a way 
to carry the fuel load, first. But, in aviation, one 
never can tell. The impossibilities of to-day are the 
achievements of to-morrow!” 


CHAPTER VI 


THE FOG BOGY 

Orvie scion found out at the Flying School that to 
make himself a good aircraft mechanic and to get 
some sound preliminary notions of aircraft engineer¬ 
ing, was a very different thing from merely learning 
to fly. 

Forty actual hours in the air, with dual controls 
and continuous head-telephone instruction from a 
competent instructor should be ample to teach any 
intelligent young fellow how to handle one certain 
make of plane in all positions and in every difficulty 
in which flying can put him. Many learn in thirty 
hours, or even slightly less. Ten hours more of solo 
flying is enough to give confidence. Four hours in 
the air with any make of machine hitherto unknown 
will make a pilot perfectly at home with it. In all, 
if the candidate for pilot has the right stuff in him, 
a hundred hours in the air — with good ground in¬ 
struction at the same time — is enough to make an 
absolutely first-class all-round pilot, able to meet any 
emergency. 

The “Flying Schools” which advertise to make a 
pilot over night and tempt learners by offering prices 


94 


THE FOG BOGY 


95 

which indicate short and insufficient training are a 
menace to aviation. 

“To my idea,” said Orvie’s flying instructor to him, 
“there should be only one grade of pilot — the high¬ 
est. No man should be allowed to fly, even in his 
own plane and alone, who can’t pass all tests meteoro¬ 
logical, navigational, and all the rest.” 

“You don’t require a chauffeur’s license for auto¬ 
mobile owners,” said the boy. 

“No,” was the quick retort, “and that’s why Ameri¬ 
can highways, nowadays, are little better than a quick 
trip to the cemetery. And Air work requires com¬ 
petence. In this School we don’t accept any one who 
doesn’t guarantee to take the full course to secure a 
Transport Pilot’s license, even if he never intends 
to do anything but run his own plane. And not one 
of our pupils has ever crashed.” 

The U. S. Army and Navy tests for pilots remain 
the strictest. This is not only because there are a 
score of things to be learned which are not necessary 
to a commercial pilot — formation flying, observa¬ 
tion, photography, gunnery, bomb-dropping, etc. — 
but because the Services remorselessly “wash out” all 
cadets who do not measure up to their standards. 

There is no demand whatever for the daring and 
dashing pilot. What were “stunts” a few years ago 


96 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

are, to-day, mere ordinary routine of training. The 
ideal pilot is the cautious and steady flyer, the man 
who does not forget, who does not lose his head, whose 
judgment is sound even though it is quick, and who 
possesses the mental twist of being as careful the 
thousandth time he takes off as the hundredth. 

Although Orvie was entered in the Flying School 
for the double courses of Engine Mechanic and Air¬ 
craft Mechanic, he had also arranged to prepare for 
his full pilot’s license as well, so as to be ready to pass 
the examinations and to take the test when he should 
reach the required age. 

The boy was already a tolerable pilot. His father 
had allowed him to be at the controls, for limited 

periods, many and many a time, when the weather 

• 

was fair, and the lad was as much at home in an air¬ 
plane as most boys of his age would be in an auto¬ 
mobile. He had probably been fifty hours in the air, 
already. 

His flying instructor, however, while quite ready 
to admit that Orvie had the natural “flying sense,” 
took many an occasion to warn him of the danger 
of “fair-weather flying.” 

“What’s the use of knowing something, if, when 
you run into a cloud, you know nothing?” said he. 

One day, when Orvie was chaffing a new student 


THE FOG BOGY 


97 

who could not get it out of his head that “flying is 
dangerous/’ the instructor took him sharply to task. 

“It’s just as tomfool an idea to say that flying is 
always safe,” he said, bluntly, “as to say that it’s 
never safe. Airplanes are not fool-proof, and they 
never will be, any more than automobiles are. There 
are fools a-plenty. Under ordinary weather condi¬ 
tions, and in the hands of an experienced pilot, an air¬ 
plane is as safe in the air as an automobile is with a 
good driver on a busy highway, safer, on the whole. 

“But, Orvie, taking off and landing require much 
more care than any automobile driving does, and if 
you’ll take the trouble to analyze fair-weather avia¬ 
tion accidents, you’ll find that 75 per cent, of them, or 
more, are due to pilots’ errors. Structural weakness 
in a modern plane is rare, very rare indeed, and engine 
trouble is a thing of the past in multi-motored 
planes.” 

“I haven’t ever had any trouble landing,” said the 
boy, jauntify. 

“Which isn’t to say that you never will have,” came 
the grim retort. “You oughtn’t to, flying out of a 
proper landing-field and back again, and, as I’ve said, 
flying from airport to airport in fine weather is actu¬ 
ally easier and safer than going at a fast clip on a 
busy country highway. 


98 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

“But what I want to get into your head, Boy, is 
that Aviation isn’t going to stay a fair-weather job. 
The air-mail plane, for example, has to fly by night 
as well as by day, and the pilot has to do his best to 
get the mails through, even in snow and fog. If bad 
weather delays the mails, people will accept it, now, 
for the business is young. They won’t, for long. In 
a few years both mail and passenger planes will run 
from New York to ’Frisco with the regularity of a 
Transcontinental Limited, now; passengers will have 
to become so confident that they will pay no more at¬ 
tention to coming down to a landing-field than they 
do, now, when a train stops at a station.” 

“Yes, sir,” said Orvie, “I suppose that’s true.” 

“That’s why this School refuses to give any ‘fair- 
weather’ course. We train full-licensed or Transport 
Pilots, and only prepare private pilot’s licenses as ex¬ 
ceptions and on condition that the course is to be 
resumed.” 

“I’ve done enough work and flying for a private 
license, haven’t I?” queried Orvie. 

“Plenty. And when you’re sixteen, in a few 
months, we’ll let you go up for the Department of 
Commerce test, but conditionally, as I said. For 
you, though, Orvie, it’s especially necessary to learn 
all you can, all the more if you’re going up to Canada, 


THE FOG BOGY 


99 

where there won’t be any daily weather reports com¬ 
ing in to Hudson Bay. I’ll lend you some meteoro¬ 
logical books; you can study them in the evenings. 
Weather is a bigger subject than you imagine. 

“I want you to get it firmly fixed in your head, Boy, 
that the finest flyer in the world may find himself in 
a tight box when it comes to bad weather or fog. 
Take the case of Byrd. If ever a man had bad luck 
on a trans-Atlantic flight, it surely was Byrd. He 
had it at the beginning, and it stuck to him all the 
way through, although all the three Navy men were 
true blue, and the big three-motor plane worked like 
a charm. 

“The trouble began right from the start. Fok- 
ker himself, designer of the plane, took the controls 
for the first test flight, but the machine proved to be 
nose-heavy, and even the inventor could not make 
a landing; the big plane crashed while landing at 
more than a mile a minute, and turned over, pinning 
and injuring everybody. No one was fatally hurt, 
but two of the men, Noville and Bennett, had a nar¬ 
row escape from death, and the hospital folk only 
just pulled them through. 

“The America , Byrd’s plane, was an experimental 
plane, in a way, that is, the flight was not intended 
merely as a hop across the ocean, but as an evidence 


ioo WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

that a big three-engined plane, able to carry passen¬ 
gers, could make the trip. You see, Orvie, what a 
good many people don’t realize is that, because of fuel 
considerations — and design as well — a multi-motor 
plane has a shorter cruising range than a single-motor 
plane. Byrd’s first great test was to get into the air 
with a load of over 15,000 pounds. He did it only by 
a hair, for the rope holding back the machine broke 
before it could be cut, and the plane started to taxi 
before the engines were thoroughly warmed up. 

“There’s no need to tell you all the story of that 
trip, but I want you to realize, Orvie, what bad 
weather means. Byrd struck fog on reaching New^ 
foundland, and could get no bearings before striking 
out to sea. He flew for 2000 miles without seeing 
either land or sea — a record! In order to get above 
the fog — or to try to — the engines had to be run 
full speed, with a heavy fuel consumption, for, as 
you know, Orvie, the higher you go the more rarefied 
becomes the air and the greater must be the speed 
to support a plane. They were flying two miles high, 
and what Byrd feared most was ice forming on the 
plane. That might mean that the America would 
drop into the sea. And, sure enough, ice did begin 
to form, so that the plane was made to drop into the 
thickest of the fog, a little distance above the sea. 


THE FOG BOGY 


IOI 


“All steering was necessarily by instruments, and 
what worried Byrd most was that he could not tell 
whether the wind was against him or astern. In 
other words, while he could tell his air-speed, he could 
not tell his ground-speed. A 20-mile wind with him 
meant a ground-speed of 120 miles an hour; the same 
wind against him meant only 80 miles an hour. Half 
that difference would mean success or failure. 

“It wasn’t until well on in the second day of con¬ 
tinuous flight that the America caught a radio mes¬ 
sage, first from one steamer and then from another, 
which gave the plane her exact position, of which, at 
that moment, Byrd had but a general idea. He knew 
through how much air he had flown, but not over 
how much sea. He found he had drifted south, but 
that he had had a following wind of 30 miles an hour, 
by great good fortune, and had made splendid speed. 

“In the afternoon of the second day, the America 
ran clear out of the fog, and radio signals began to be 
received from all parts of Europe. It was easy to 
get direction, then, and the big three-motored plane 
soon was humming over France, having touched the 
French shore near Brest. At that point, the weather 
was good, but it looked thick ahead. The radio ex¬ 
pert on the America got word from Paris that the 
weather was thick and squally. 


io2 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 


“Night came on, and with it came rain, fog, and 
heavy squalls. Only at rare intervals could the lights 
of a town be seen. The air was terribly bumpy, and 
it tossed the heavy plane about like a feather — but 
the engines never missed a stroke. The compasses 
were not working as they should, and even the earth- 
induction compass was a little off. The instrument 
has been developed to perfection since. 

“Byrd, himself, tells the rest of the story this way: 

“ 'About the time we expected to hit Paris, we got 
temporarily out of thick weather. I saw bright 
lights ahead and a revolving light which I took to be 
Le Bourget (the great landing-field at Paris). Our 
dead reckoning showed us to be just about at Paris.’ 

“Remember, Orvie, it was still dark, foggy, and 
rainy, with vicious wind-gusts and driving squalls. 

“ T thought our troubles were at an end. I wrote 
out the following radio: “Paris is in sight. It has 
been a great trip. I wish to tell you with enthusiasm 
that Noville, Acosta, and Balchen have faced grave 
dangers with the greatest possible courage and calm¬ 
ness.” 

“ 'That radio was never sent. I looked down and 
saw the revolving light flash for an instant on water. 

“ 'It was a lighthouse! 

'"We were somewhere on the coast of France. 


THE FOG BOGY 


103 

“ The compass had gone wrong — had taken us in 
a great circle. There had either been some local af¬ 
fection of the compass in the plane, or the pilot’s 
dial had stuck badly. We tapped the dials, checked 
them with the extra standard compass that we car¬ 
ried, and got them 0. K. 

“ ‘Again we set out for Paris and again were tossed 
about in the storm and darkness. It was raining 
very hard on the coast, and visibility was bad. It 
was much stormier inland. We afterwards found 
that the centre of the storm was over Paris. The 
inky darkness was broken occasionally by the flashes 
of our searchlights as we needed them temporarily, 
and the fire from the engine-exhaust pipes. The 
rough air made it a little difficult to steer, especially 
in the darkness, but we kept a pretty good general 
course. 

“ ‘Finally our dead reckoning showed us to be at 
Paris, but we could see nothing — nothing beneath us 
— nothing but the luminous lights of our steering 
instruments. We had got to the point beyond which, 
if we had continued, we could not have returned to 
the coastal waters on account of diminished gasoline. 
We knew that we should need a few gallons of re¬ 
serve in order to cruise around for a landing-place that 
we might not even then find. 


io 4 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

“ T believe at the moment we turned we were near 
Paris; our motors were heard by many people at 
Le Bourget through a sound intensifies but I could 
not flirt any more with the lives of my shipmates. 
Had we tried to land at Le Bourget in that thick 
weather, we should probably have crashed and almost 
certainly have killed many people in the waiting 
crowds. The only thing to do was to turn back to 
water. 

“ Tt would probably be difficult for the layman to 
visualize our predicament, tossed around in the inky 
darkness of the storm, drenched by rain, actually 
above our goal, and forced to turn away because of 
bad weather. 

“ ‘But the decision to turn back did not carry 
safety, either. It meant that, even if we should find 
water, we could not be certain of landing without dis¬ 
aster, because I never heard of any one landing in 
the water when it was pitch dark and when the water 
could not be seen.’ " 

“That's one point," commented Orvie, “where the 
airship has a better chance. It can keep in the air 
without using fuel; the airplane can’t." 

“That didn’t save the Dixmude, or the Shenan¬ 
doah, or a dozen others," the Instructor replied. 
“But let Byrd go on with his story: 


THE FOG BOGY 


105 

“ ‘We set a course for the lighthouse we had seen. 
The wind might blow us off a bit in the darkness, but, 

I 

if the fog were not too thick, there, we were confident 
of hitting it, provided we were where we thought 
while over Paris. Much of the way we could see 
nothing beneath us and we had to pull in the antenna 
of the wireless to keep it from hitting objects on the 
ground. But, at last, we emerged from the mists, 
and there was the lighthouse before us. 

“‘We cruised over it slowly, but, in spite of the 
light, the area around it was black, and we could only 
guess its topography. We had hoped there would 
be a beach. By the quick flash of the revolving 
beacon we could tell that we were over water and 
dimly distinguish the shore-line. We could not dis¬ 
cern the character of the beach. It was still raining 
and dismally thick. 

“ ‘We decided to land near enough to the beach¬ 
line to swim ashore, if necessary, and to salvage the 
plane if it were not too badly wrecked. At the same 
time we should be far enough away to miss the rocks, 
should the beach be rocky. That, of course, we could 
not tell. 

“ ‘We now dropped a number of navigation flares 
as nearly in a line as we could, about 100 yards from 
the beach-line. They all ignited, and although they 


io6 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 


made a light in a pool of blackness, we hoped we 
should be able to judge the distance of the plane 
above the water as we descended. Of course, if we 
could not judge it, we should go into the water at 
flying speed, which would smash everything badly, 
since water does not give much when hit hard. 

“ Those hours in the black storm had not been 
pleasant. I felt myself entirely responsible for the 
lives of my shipmates. I don’t believe they thought 
there was much chance of getting down safely, but 
still they faced gallantly, with steady courage, what¬ 
ever fate lay ahead. In a few moments the story 
would be ended, but to the last they calmly obeyed 
orders. 

“ ‘Balchen happened to be at the wheel. I gave 
the orders to land. The plane was in control, and 
the engines functioning perfectly; for 42 hours they 
had made some 1500 revolutions per minute without 
missing a beat. 

“ ‘As we neared the water, we could not see it; only 
the flares ahead of us and beneath us. 

“ The wheels touched, and though the landing 
gear is secured to the plane with a tremendous factor 
of safety, it was sheared off, along with the wheels, 
with hardly a jar of the plane, as though a great knife 
had cut it, thus demonstrating the tremendous resis- 


THE FOG BOGY 


107 

tance of water when hit by a rapidly moving object. 
No one had predicted that. 

“ ‘It seemed just a second after that the crash 
came. I suppose I was dazed a little. I know I 
got a stiff blow over my heart that made it beat ir¬ 
regularly for many months afterwards. 

“ ‘I found myself in the water, outside, swimming 
around in the pitchy dark and rain. 

“ T could hear Noville calling for me, but not an¬ 
other sound in the extraordinary stillness which con¬ 
trasted so vividly with the roar of the great motors 
which had been pounding on our ear-drums for 42 
hours like the tom-toms of Hades. 

“ ‘The plane instantly filled with water. Noville 
was getting out of the window ... I found Balchen 
slightly caught under water and trying to extricate 
himself. He, like Noville, was somewhat dazed. . . . 
Thinking that Acosta must have been caught under 
the water in the cockpit, we dived down, but he was 
not there. A moment later he appeared, apparently 
from nowhere, swimming toward the wing. 

“ With grunts and groans we dragged ourselves 
upon the wing. . . . Noville, though dazed, was 
carrying out his orders given before leaving the 
States, which were to rip up the emergency cabin in 
case of landing in the water and pump up the rubber 


108 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

boat. He was at his job, though he could hardly 
stand up and was falling every minute or two. . . . 
As the wing was almost flush with the water, there 
was no difficulty in launching the boat, and wearily 
we made for the shore in the dark. We had reached 
Europe, and when, a couple of hours later, we sal¬ 
vaged the United States mail, we had accomplished 
the first trans-Atlantic air mail in history.’ ” 

“Wasn’t that the same plane, rechristened the 
Friendship, which took Amelia Earhart of Kansas 
across, the first woman to fly the Atlantic?” 

“It was, and if the mist had been just a little bit 
less dense, the Friendship might never have snuggled 
down on the coast of Wales. It was touch and go, 
all the way, because the radio went dead. Two of 
Lindbergh’s parachute jumps and abandonments of 
air-mail planes were due to the fog bogy. 

“Chamberlin’s great flight missed its final triumph 
at Berlin for just exactly the same reason. The 
Columbia reached Cornwall, England, in 21^2 hours, 
cracking good time, but Chamberlin wanted to get 
to Berlin, and he resisted the temptation to land, al¬ 
though it would soon be dark and the weather threat¬ 
ened storm. There was bad fog ahead, but 
Chamberlin figured that fog very seldom goes above 
15,000 feet and he could easily go to 18,000 or more. 


THE FOG BOGY 


109 

“That’s where Chamberlin’s bad luck came in. He 
took the Columbia up to 20,000 feet, where the con¬ 
trols were hardly effective, and still the fog lay 
higher. Nothing more could be done. The plane 
had reached her ‘ceiling’. Undoubtedly, if the 
Columbia had been better equipped with instru¬ 
ments, and Chamberlin had not been so absolutely 
worn out with forty hours of continuous flying — for 
the passenger-owner, Levine, was not an experienced 
enough pilot to be trusted with the controls at night 
and in thick weather — the Columbia could have 
been driven through the fog. Not daring to go 
through, he cruised backwards and forwards until 
dawn. Let him tell his own story of what happens in 
bad weather to a pilot who isn’t an ace! 

“ ‘Dawn came at last, and a welcome sight it was! 
Fatigue had made me light-headed by this time. I 
still knew what I was doing, but a feeling of unreality 
was creeping over me and I knew that, unless I rested 
there was danger of my passing out. It was light 
enough for Levine to handle the ship. 

“ ‘ “See what you can do with her for a while”, I 
said, “I’ve got to have some rest.” 

“ ‘And I shoved back on the gas-tank shelf in bliss¬ 
ful relaxation. 

“ ‘We were still at an altitude of 20,000 feet or 


no WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

more, and Levine was following my example of kill¬ 
ing time until it was full daylight. All went well for 
ten or fifteen minutes. Just what happened then is 
hard to say, but flying in thin air at this height re¬ 
quired more skill than Levine ever had been called 
on to exert, and it is probable he lost some altitude. 
Or he may have started down one of the promising 
cloud valleys, only to find his progress blocked at the 
other end. Either this, or in trying to lift the Bel- 
lanca over a ridge of fog after losing a little altitude, 
he got us into the mist. 

“ Tt was a matter of seconds, then, until he was 
hopelessly bewildered and utterly without sense of 
direction. Inevitably he pulled the Columbia up 
into a stall. 

“ ‘If she had been an ordinary airplane, then, she 
would have gone tail-spinning down through the fog. 
Being a Bellanca, she did the nearest thing she could 
to a spin. Off on her left wing she went, nose down, 
in a steep and dizzy spiral. The blinding mists, 
sweeping by, gave no hint of what was going on; 
something was wrong, but Levine had no idea what. 

“ ‘My lethargy dissolved before the disaster facing 
us. 

“ ‘Even in the time it took me to slide down off 
the tank into my seat, the Bellanca’s wings had 


THE FOG BOGY 


hi 


started shuddering and shimmying as if they would 
be ripped away from the fuselage of the sturdy little 
ship at any instant. Her balanced rudder, oscillating 
in the terrific dive, was whipping the rudder-bar back 
and forth with leg-breaking force and shaking the 
rear end of the plane with such violence that I ex¬ 
pected the whole tail to be torn off. 

“ ‘Never in my life have I felt that death was so 
close or been so badly scared. Levine, on the con¬ 
trary, (with the odd failure to realize that flying has 
its hazards, which is so characteristic of him) was en¬ 
joying the experience hugely. When the ship got be¬ 
yond his control, he had shut off the motor and then 
taken his hands and feet off the unmanageable con¬ 
trols entirely. 

“ ‘He was sitting there, laughing, and he told me 
afterward that he had been amused because the 
Columbia was behaving like a “bucking bronco.” 
It evidently never occurred to him that the next 
“buck” might take us both into eternity. 

“ ‘So violent was the action of the rudder-bar that 
it would have been utterly foolhardy to try to stop 
it all at once. Instead, I pushed my feet down cau¬ 
tiously to catch it at the end of its vicious arc and 
“dampen” out the terrible vibration that seemed 
about to carry away the tail. I was as much at a loss 


112 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

about direction and what was going on in that fog as 
was Levine, but the plane’s behavior and the fright¬ 
ful rush of air told me that we were going down at tre¬ 
mendous speed. 

“ ‘The altimeter needle swept past the hundred- 
foot marks like the indicator of a swift elevator click¬ 
ing off the floors in a great office building. It was 
the bank-and-turn indicator that told me what the 
plane was really doing — a diving banking turn to 
the left which was taking us down, down, down. 

“ ‘Our air-speed indicator had calibrations only as 
far as 160 miles an hour, but the hand had passed this 
mark and was jammed up against a dial post as if it 
were going to push it out of the way. 

“ ‘It is hard enough to take a plane in normal flying 
position, go into a cloud and keep on an even keel 
even when you have the proper instruments for 
“blind” flying. It is so much harder if your instru¬ 
ments aren’t all they might be, that I had been 
wandering about all night in zero cold above the 
clouds rather than try it. But to take a plane that is 
out of control in the fog and ready to fall apart 
from vibration and to make it tractable again is one 
of those jobs that just can’t be done until you have to 
do it. 

“ ‘The first thing I did was to smother the rudder 


THE FOG BOGY 


1 13 

with my feet in a progressive choking-down ma¬ 
neuver that stopped its wild oscillations. Then I 
ruddered out of the weird spiral dive into which we 
had fallen, my eyes on the bank-and-turn indicator 
until it told me we were going fairly straight ahead. 
After that it was a relatively simple matter to pull up 
the Bellanca’s nose until she lost her comet speed, 
and the inclinometer and speed indicators showed 
she was reasonably near level flight again. Writing 
about it now, I can see that this all sounds easy, but 
in actual accomplishment it was a difficult matter; 
probably the hardest job I ever faced in my life. 

“ We had fallen into trouble at approximately 
21,000 feet, and by the time I had the Bellanca under 
control again, the arrested needle of the altimeter 
stood at 4000 feet! In the brief space since the 
plane had started her wild plunge we had dropped 
more than three miles toward the earth! 

“ ‘There had been one factor in our favor — it had 
started to get light. We were still in thick fog when 
I got the Columbia under control again, but it was 
light enough for me to tell when — and if — we came 
through the bottom of the clouds. I knew we were 
somewhere over Germany, unless my calculations 
were all wrong, and I knew also that the Harz Moun¬ 
tains push up to 3000 and 4000 feet in many places. 


11 4 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

It would be too bad to meet one of those peaks in 
the fog, after having just pulled out of one nasty mess. 

“ ‘1 wiped the cold perspiration off my face, cleared 
the motor, and stuck the Bellanca’s nose down again. 
Ceiling or no ceiling underneath, we had started 
down and we had to go on through. 

“ Would we come out all right, or were we about 
to smear ourselves and the Columbia all over a rugged 
German landscape? If we hit a valley, there was 
little likelihood that the fog would extend all the way 
to the ground, but there was every possibility that 
some of the mountain tops were shrouded in the mist 
through which we were flying. Thus I had succeeded 
from one worry to another. Levine was as unper¬ 
turbed as ever. 

“ The clouds grew thinner and began to be broken 
during the last 2000 to 3000 feet, but it was still 
too near dawn to distinguish anything below. Be¬ 
tween 1000 and 5000 feet we came through the ceiling 
altogether and found ourselves flying in rain and 
mist over a body of water. The visibility was poor 
and we thought at first we must be over the North 
Sea, as only one shore-line was in sight. It turned 
out to be a river, however, and presently, a mile or so 
ahead, we saw the glow of lights against the low- 
hanging clouds. We made for them and found they 


THE FOG BOGY 


ii5 

were a series of blast furnaces at the edge of a sizable 
manufacturing town. 

“ ‘We flew round and round in the rain, when we 
saw some white flares which were being fired into 
the air, off to one side of the town. The attendants, 
there, had heard our motor and guessed our identity. 
We got the direction to Berlin by swooping over the 
aerodrome not more than twenty feet above ground. 
We had about ten gallons of gas left and could go 
another hundred miles. 

“We flew through rain for the first fifty miles, 
then it stopped; the ceiling gradually lifted to 2000 
feet and the weather began to clear. If only we had 
been able to get through the cloud masses a few 
hours earlier! How far we would have been now! 
What a shame that we couldn’t have crossed over into 
this fair weather area and been far on our way to 
Berlin or Warsaw! 

“ Tt was now nearing six. The gauge stood at 
zero and I knew there was gas for only a few minutes 
more. But Levine wanted to go on, to fly literally 
to “the last drop of gas” and take our chances on get¬ 
ting down without damage to the Columbia when 
the motor finally quit. 

“ T had him climb over the tank and stand in the 
rear part of the cabin to keep the plane from nosing 


n6 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

over when she came down, in case the field proved to 
be soft. With her fuel tanks empty, she was de¬ 
cidedly nose-heavy. 

“ Ten or fifteen minutes after the fuel gauge quit 
working and I had recommended landing, the motor 
faltered for the first time since we left Roosevelt 
Field, coughed once or twice, and stopped. At the 
first warning my mind was made up on two likely- 
looking wheat fields below, adjoining each other but 
separated by a road. 

“ ‘Down came the Bellanca, maneuvering for a 
“dead stick” landing into the wind. I slipped her 
into the first field and leveled out, the Columbia's 
wheels swishing along through the wheat before they 
and the tail skid struck the ground together. She 
rolled roughly to the road and bounced over it pretty 
savagely, continuing so far in the short field that I 
had to “ground loop” her to keep her away from a 
fence. It was a severe test for the landing gear, but 
everything held. The Bellanca stopped dead still, a 
little wet from brushing through the standing grain, 
but unscathed. Our New York-Germany flight was 
over, 43 hours, 3905 miles, having broken the long¬ 
distance flying record of the world — Lindbergh’s 
mark of two weeks before — by 295 miles.’ 

“The Ireland-Canada flight of the German 


THE FOG BOGY 


117 

Bremen, although it was a true crossing of the At¬ 
lantic from East to West, lost much of its spectacular 
glory by the smash-up of the Bremen on an island off 
the coast of Canada, after the fliers had been admit¬ 
tedly lost for hours because of fog and tempest. 
Koehl and Fitzmaurice faced terrible weather, and 
when land was sighted they thought it was Green¬ 
land or Labrador. Even good navigators can be sev¬ 
eral hundred miles off in such a case. It proves, if 
anything, the splendid work of the American west-to- 
east fliers. 

“But you see, Orvie,” the Instructor concluded, 
“that, when men like Lindbergh, Byrd, and Cham¬ 
berlin find themselves forced to the very last notch to 
cope with bad weather, long-distance flying requires 
not only the most skilful pilots and the toughest na¬ 
ture, but also experienced navigators and men abso¬ 
lutely at their ease in all the difficulties of ‘blind’ 
flying. That, my boy, is what you’ve got to strain 
to reach yourself. The real flier is the man who can 
successfully wrestle with the Demon of Storm, and — 
still more difficult — evade the smothering clutch of 
the Bogy of Fog.” 


CHAPTER VII 


INTO THE WILDS 

The four months spent by Orvie in the Flying 
School, with special attention to the work of a me¬ 
chanic, made him tolerably efficient; especially did he 
learn to realize the absolute and imperative necessity 
of going over a plane and its engine after every day’s 
flight. He learned, too, that the right time to make 
sure of the conditions of a trip is before the start, not 
after ft. 

Major Burwell, Commandant at Bolling Field, has 
put to an end forever the story of Lindbergh’s “luck,” 
showing that no aviator could ever be more scrupu¬ 
lously methodical and careful than “The Lone Eagle.” 

“His thorough preliminary studies,” wrote Major 
Burwell, “class Lindbergh as a sound, intelligent 
pioneer and aviator, rather than as a fly-by-night, 
dashing, dare-devil, stunt-defying pilot. . . . Lind¬ 
bergh was in charge of his own arrangements. . . . 
Every detail, both of technical and flight nature, was 
worked out with the extremest care.” 

A good idea of Lindbergh’s intensive scrutiny of 

the smallest detail that might hinder a flight is seen 

118 


INTO THE WILDS 119 

in the description of his preparation for the take-off 
in his famous flight to Mexico. The take-off is al¬ 
ways one of the most difficult and dangerous parts 
of a long non-stop voyage, as the lamentable death 
of Lieutenant Commander Davis and Lieutenant 
Wooster in the American Legion proved. The 
American Legion had shown herself a magnificent 
plane, and Davis was one of the best fliers in the 
country. But the great plane wouldn’t rise smoothly, 
and when Wooster tried to land her, less than one 
minute after she had taken the air, the American 
Legion dug into the mud, turned upside down, and 
slid into a pond, trapping the two aviators in the 
cockpit under water. 

“Lindbergh planned his take-off and executed it 
exactly as he planned; therefore he makes light of it; 
yet no airman of experience, knowing all the condi¬ 
tions, would gainsay that it was positively one of the 
most difficult and best-executed take-offs in aviation 
history. Events leading up to this flight included 
measuring the different dimensions of the field and 
different wind directions. 

“ ‘Slim’ (Lindbergh) had on three different occa¬ 
sions walked over the entire aerodrome, carefully 
noting the soft or boggy places, the rough spots, the 
sound, high, firm or grassy places; the ditches, depres- 


120 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

sions, and obstacles bordering the aerodrome; the 
height of the trees, buildings, smoke-stacks, radio 
towers, and so on, within a mile of the field; also the 
fact that the river level was ten or fifteen feet below 
the aerodrome level at one particular end of the field 
where no hurdle presented itself. This was noted by 
Lindbergh, and he later took advantage of it. 

“The field was water-soaked, and has no prepared 
runway. Two depressions run straight across the 
take-off, except for two narrow openings of hard 
ground. These spots were bordered by bog-holes 
caused by the recent thaw following a frozen crust. 
These holes could not be filled, because trucks would 
bog down of their own weight. ‘Slim’ had placed 
flags at these spots, not as an aid to space distances, 
but rather to know where the bog-holes were.” 

The total weight of Lindbergh’s plane, loaded, ex¬ 
ceeded 4000 pounds. It will give some idea of the 
exactitude of his figuring to say that he did not take 
a parachute because of the extra weight of 15 pounds. 
He almost decided to put in 30 more pounds of gas 
before giving her the gun. But he had figured lift¬ 
ing capacity to a fraction and ground friction to a 
decimal point. There was no luck in his quietly 
reasoned judgment that just that 30 pounds might 
spell the difference between success and failure. 



Colonel Lindbergh arrives at Curtiss Field for the 

New York to Paris Hop. 









Colonel Lindbergh about to Hop Off. 





INTO THE WILDS 


121 


“The weight carried, the state of the ground, the 
50-pound square-inch pressure in the tires, and so 
forth, made it imperative for Lindbergh to guide his 
plane from the take-off exactly over a long, narrow 
course; and, regardless of whether the Spirit of St. 
Louis is blind or not, Lindbergh has proved that he 
isn’t. 

“Therefore, following the course as accurately as 
he did; lifting his heavy load over the bad spots; 
easing it back to the ground without crashing his 
landing gear; lifting it off again at low speed; keeping 
the nose down with cool nerve, regardful of approach¬ 
ing obstacles; easing it out over the river at the 
precise point he had previously planned for; allowing 
it to settle, instead of pulling up and squashing — 
these constituted victory over the one single thing 
which most concerned him about the entire flight. 
This superb piece of work will stand as superb until 
it is frequently duplicated. It is my belief that it 
will stand for a long time.” 

Lindbergh’s inspection of the engine — in com¬ 
pany with the keenest mechanical engineers the 
Army possessed — would lead to technicalities if set 
forth in description. But no doctor, listening to a 
sick person’s heart-beat with a stethoscope, is more 
careful than was Lindy to listen for the slightest ir- 


122 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

regularity in the motor, testing it at various revolu- 
tions-per-minute speeds. 

Government requirements concerning the inspec¬ 
tion of aircraft are very rigid. A licensed plane must 
be given a line inspection — covering every detail of 
engine and structure in precisely the manner stipu¬ 
lated by the rules — in the 24 hours preceding every 
flight, and the results of that inspection must be writ¬ 
ten in full in the log-book of the plane under the 
inspector’s signature. Failure to do so will cost the 
owner his license, and negligence in doing so will cost 
the mechanic his license. In addition to this, a 
“periodic inspection” — which requires a very thor¬ 
ough overhaul — must be done after each 100 hours 
of flight. The navigation and engine log-book of 
every licensed aircraft must be sent every three 
months to the Secretary of Commerce, and all flying 
is compulsorily suspended if any item in the log-book 
is questioned. 

Matt Logan, a war pilot, had also his transport 
pilot’s license and thus had full privileges of flying 
under any and all conditions. Orvie, by reason of 
his age, could get nothing higher than a private pilot’s 
license. This gave him the right to fly Logan’s 
plane, but not if there were any passengers aboard. 

The plane chosen by Logan for his summer’s work 


INTO THE WILDS 


123 

was a Wright-Bellanca plane, with three “Whirlwind” 
engines and specially equipped with a combined land¬ 
ing and pontoon gear. As there are no air-ports in 
the Far North Woods, and as the ground is mainly 
forest and rock, seaplane landings would be the easi¬ 
est; the hunting country is studded with little lakes. 

In order to become thoroughly familiarized with 
this compound landing gear, Orvie spent a couple of 
weeks at the flying-field at Paterson, N. J., and on the 
salt marshes, until Logan was satisfied that the boy 
was perfectly at home both in taking-off and landing. 

“You see, Orvie,” said his chief, the day before their 
departure, “the tourist traffic in Canada has reached 
the point of being the third most important industry 
in that country, or, more exactly, the Dominion’s 
third largest source of revenue, and most of it comes 
from the United States. 

“But one thing that hasn’t been fully realized is 
that American sportsmen are anxious for good sport, 
and they don’t care much what they pay for it. A 
big-game expedition into the Canadian wilds runs 
into a lot of money, especially nowadays, when all 
the big game close to civilization has been pretty 
well killed off. What you might call the ‘accessible 
fringe’ is so narrow that, if you marked it on an ordi¬ 
nary-sized map, it would make a band only an inch 


124 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

wide. All north of that, the hunting and fishing is 
marvelous, and the country is so absolutely unex¬ 
plored that its game resources are almost inexhaust¬ 
ible. 

“Now, to get to the untouched big-game haunts in 
the ordinary way is a long and costly journey; a tiring 
one, too, with its days of canoeing down rivers and 
streams, its long portages over marsh country, and 
heavy overland packing of camp supplies. A sports¬ 
man who has only a month to spend — and most 
rich men in America are busy men — is likely to 
waste a good half, or even two-thirds of his time in 
tiresome journeying to the game country and back. 
And it isn’t every sportsman who likes to rough it 
too much. Some do, but most of them find camp life 
a sufficient change, without the actual physical ex¬ 
haustion of an arduous trip. 

“Then there’s another thing. If a sportsman 
spends a few thousand dollars to go up into a hunt¬ 
ing country, he wants to be sure that he’s going to 
get good sport. How can he be sure? He depends 
on an Indian guide, mostly, and the Indian is likely 
not to have been in that part of the country since 
the season before. That’s not always a sure direc¬ 
tion ; game doesn’t stay put. 

“Now, last month, I flew all over the country to 


INTO THE WILDS 


125 

which I’m going to take my hunting parties, and I 
plotted out the stretches of the country where game 
could be seen and where it couldn’t. I’ll show you 
the map. You’ll be amazed to see how spotty it is. 
Places where there ought to be lots of big game, I 
didn’t see any at all; places where I didn’t expect to 
find much, were rich. How could you make such a 
survey on the trail, when it takes a hard day’s work 
to cover twenty miles? In my airplane I’ve see¬ 
sawed back and forth over five hundred miles of ter¬ 
ritory in a day. 

“A couple of years ago, two well-known Canadian 
pilots flew a U. S. prospecting party into the unex¬ 
plored territory of Northern British Columbia and 
the Yukon, spending the entire summer about the 
Liard River. They described it as a sportsmen’s 
paradise. The lakes and rivers teemed with fish. 
It was common to see as many as a dozen moose 
standing on the shore of a lake, and, from the air, 
caribou and grizzlies were seen in numbers.” 

“Are we going up there, Mr. Logan?” 

“We could, easily, if any one wanted to go so far, 
and we could go even farther, if a sportsman wanted 
barren-ground caribou or musk-ox. But there’s no 
need. I can pick a man up at New York, Cleveland, 
Chicago, Detroit, or anywhere, after breakfast, and 


126 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

land him in his camp the same evening with his guns 
and supplies. At that, I don’t believe it’ll cost him 
any more than the long, dragging journey with por¬ 
ters and guides, .if as much. And I can guarantee 
him good sport. 

“You remember when the Canadians first started 
that flying service to the new gold-fields of north¬ 
western Quebec? Well, between Haileybury and 
Rouyn, it was possible to see moose almost every day, 
and one pilot made a point of carrying a bag of salt 
on his trips to dump near a moose-run. And there 
are any number of lakes into which a seaplane could 
land with ease, always on still water. Around James 
Bay, too, the mud flats are at times covered with 
Canada goose, a species of game which the average 
hunter has never had a chance to shoot. 

“In the Laurentian Mountains, one or two sports¬ 
men’s camp hotels have been established, with an air¬ 
plane service to points far in the woods, at perhaps 
an hour’s flying from the hotel, and I know one place 
of the kind which has every room booked for four 
years in advance. Planes now run back of the Temi- 
skaming country and into the rich territory behind 
the Chibougamous mining-field, in northern Quebec. 
The Red Lake district of Ontario is now available to 
the hunter. Planes operate from Lac du Bonnet in 


INTO THE WILDS 


127 

Manitoba into the vast Manitoba hinterland to¬ 
wards Hudson Bay. From Calgary, the Peace River 
Country can be reached. Within very few years, the 
old canoeing and portaging trails for hunters will be 
a thing of the past. The airplane will put them out 
of commission, just as the railroad has the transcon¬ 
tinental trails for prairie-wagons used by the Mor¬ 
mons and the ’Forty-niners.” 

“It’s a pity, in a way,” commented Orvie, reflec¬ 
tively. 

“In books, it is,” retorted Logan. “But if you’d 
ever done heavy portaging in swamp country, after a 
long morning’s canoeing, stung till your face was 
swollen twice its size by mosquitoes and the black-flies 
of the North, and then had to put up with some half- 
fried bacon and a slab of pan-bread, you’d appreciate 
being able to fly in a single day from some point near 
your home town to the actual hunting-grounds, where 
your camp is already prepared and guides are wait¬ 
ing. And, supposing an airplane like ours can take 
three hunters, flying 100 miles an hour, that’s only 
costing each hunter about $75 per hundred miles — 
and even less; two canoemen and a guide, for the five 
days necessary to cover that distance, would cost you 
more. Take it from me, Orvie, the seaplane is the 
hunting-wagon of the future.” 


1 


128 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

The boy grinned expectantly. 

“HI see it for myself to-morrow!” 

“You will. Now, no late hours to-night, for we’re 
going to make an early start! We’re not taking pas¬ 
sengers, this time, but we’re toting all the necessities 
for a camp outfit which I haven’t been able to send 
ahead by trail.” 

“And gas?’ 

“We’ll refuel in Canada. I’ve made all arrange¬ 
ments. I really don’t need to make this preparatory 
trip, but I’d like to see for myself that everything is 

ready for the hunters.” 

* 

“How many parties are we taking up?” 

“During the summer? Four — and to two differ¬ 
ent camps. That means quite a bit of flying up there, 
too. It’s a chance for you, Orvie! You’ll get a good 
hundred hours of flying, this summer, and that counts 
heavily in your favor when it comes to making appli¬ 
cation for the higher pilots’ licenses.” 

“Well,” said the boy, as he got up and stretched, 
“one thing I do know, and that is that the machine is 
in tip-top shape.” 

“You’ve been tinkering at it all day,” said Logan, 
cocking a wary eye at him, “and if it isn’t all right, 
you’ll have lost the best flying chance of your life. 
More than that, too,” he added, “we’re going over a 


INTO THE WILDS 


129 

good many hundred miles of country where there’s 
no landing-place at all, and if the motor bucks, 
there’ll be nothing for it but the parachutes.” 

“She won’t buck,” said the boy. “I’ll stake my 
hat on it.” 

“You’re staking your head,” said Logan. “That’s 
how important it is. Now, off to bed with you!” 

The Dan’l Boone, a tri-motored Bellanca plane, 
streamlined to the last notch and showing every inch 
of the stability and power she possessed, was moored 
close to the small boat-pier. 

Orvie has been the first one out of bed, and when 
Logan came up, the motors were just idling over to 
keep them warm. Everything had been packed the 
day before, and the chief just cast a sharp eye over 
the plane to see that the stowage had not been dis¬ 
turbed. 

Both climbed in, Logan in the pilot’s seat, Orvie in 
that of the mechanic. 

“Contact! ” said Logan, half to himself, from habit, 
for he was used to landplanes and to the whirling of a 
propeller by the ground crew. 

The propellers of the Dan'l Boone began to spin. 
She glided a few yards, than began to get way as the 
engines broke into a purring roar, dashed and spat¬ 
tered as the speed indicator started round the dial, 


130 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

skimmed the water a few times, and, as Logan gently 
drew back the joy-stick, she rose clear. 

The load was a fairly heavy one, and the pilot 
leveled out, when about twenty feet up, in order to 
gain flying speed, and then lifted her nose again. 
The Bellanca climbed like a charm against the gentle 
wind and reached a comfortable flying altitude. 

A slight bank, a half turn, and the Dan’l Boone was 
fairly headed for the hunting country of the north. 

Orvie, cotton-wool in his ears to deaden a little the 
terrific roar of the three engines, listened intently. 
The motors ran regularly and smoothly and with very 
little vibration to the plane. Soon they had left the 
lake and were winging steadily over Canada. 

As he looked down, Orvie saw that Logan was right 
about landing-places. The belt of farm-land to the 
north of the lakes once passed, the ground below 
showed craggy, and covered with stunted forest. 
These were not the real “woods”, but the region had 
been thoroughly lumbered over just the same, and 
stumps and second-growth timber made an impos¬ 
sible landing condition. There was no doubt of it, a 
forced landing in that part of the country meant a cer¬ 
tain crash, and there was much less water than the 
boy had expected. 

Although he was as sure as he could be concerning 


INTO THE WILDS 131 

the engines, one never knew! A sense of uncertainty 
and responsibility began to worry him. But the three 
“Whirlwinds” roared on and never skipped a beat. 

After three hours’ flying, they came to a differ¬ 
ent kind of country. The rocks showed up less. 
There was a good deal more swamp and not a little 
tamarack forest. 

Logan turned half round and pointed down. The 
plane was flying at about 1800 feet, with a clear sky 
and good visibility, and below them and ahead of 
them, was a serpentine-shaped black spot — a lake, 
the Lac du Bonnet, where the Oiseau River joins the 
Winnipeg, about 25 miles southeast of Fort Alex¬ 
ander on Lake Winnipeg, and a railroad terminal. 

A few more minutes’ flying, and Logan shut off the 
motor for a glide. The Bellanca swooped down, de¬ 
scending by S-turns, leveled out above the water, and 
just lost flying speed as her pontoons touched, run¬ 
ning toward the pier as easily as a rowboat, coming 
to rest only a few yards away. 

Refueling was simple, and a couple of hours later, 
the Daril Boone was on the way again. 

An hour later, passing over a tiny lake in the Pijiki 
Country, Orvie saw his first moose, and shortly after, 
flying low, he spotted a bear charging up-hill, evi¬ 
dently disturbed by the roar of the motors. The 


132 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

moose had not paid any attention, evidently con¬ 
sidering that birds, however big, were no concern of 
his. 

A couple of hours later, the little lake to which they 
were bound showed ahead, and a few minutes after, 
the Bellanca was swooping down to a landing. As 
she came down, a canoe with an Indian paddler shot 
out to meet her, and, as the plane came almost to a 
standstill, and taxied up, the Indian snubbed her to 
a mooring-post in the middle of the lake. This was 
nothing but a tree sunk in the lake and weighted with 
stones, from the trunk of which projected an up¬ 
standing stump of branch, on which was bolted a 
strong swivel-hook. The main propeller was immo¬ 
bilized, and a short pole, fitted into a socket, acted as 
a fender. 

“Squalls rise suddenly on these lakes/’ Logan ex¬ 
plained, “and, as I showed you, I have had a special 
band with mooring-rings riveted to the fuselage, so 
that the Dan’l Boone can swing like a weathercock 
to any wind, without smashing her propeller against 
the ‘mooring-mast’. There are too many snags to 
let us tie up near shore.” 

The tents already had been pitched on a little prom¬ 
ontory, firewood gathered, trout caught; and a good 
fire was blazing. There were camp beds, but Orvie, 


INTO THE WILDS 


i 33 

like Logan, preferred to throw himself on the springy 
balsam beds such as the guides used. He would need 
to be up betimes, for “line inspection” was his task 
before the “hop off” in the morning. It proved 
necessary, too, for the spark gap on one of the plugs 
was not to his liking. 

“Since we’re running light and she’ll rise easily,” 
said Logan, “you take her, Orvie. Let’s see what 
you can do. Don’t let the trees bulldoze you! I’ve 
seen pilots worried in advance because they thought 
trees too close. What’s your first move?” 

“To find out the direction of the wind,” said Orvie. 

“And how are you going to do that?” 

Orvie grinned and pointed to the top of the tallest 
tree. 

“I swarmed that one this morning, early,” he said. 

Logan looked up. 

A “sock,” in other words, a funnel-shaped piece 
of stuff, had been mounted on a swivel right near 
the top of the tree, at a point where there was a 
branching, the thin top of the tree having been sawn 
off there. 

“When did you get the time to make that?” he 
said. 

“I didn’t,” said the boy, chuckling with pride. 
“I brought the swivel with me, in my pocket. I 


i 3 4 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

read about that trick in an Alaskan Survey report, 
and it struck me as a good one.” 

Logan clapped him on the shoulder. 

“Good stuff, Orvie,” he said. “But the smoke from 
the fire usually does as well, better, sometimes, for it 
gives you the ground wind. But the ‘sock’ is useful, 
too. If you can think ahead like that, you’ll make a 
flyer. In with y ou! ” 

The words of praise greatly heightened the boy’s 
confidence, and he “taxied” the plane to the lee end of 
the lake. 

“Just one word of warning, Son,” said Logan. 
“Running light, you’ve got plenty of room to lift on 
the lake. When you get off, don’t be afraid to level 
off for a bit. If you try to climb too fast, you’ll stall, 
and squash. And don’t turn on a climb unless it’s at 
a desperate pinch! ” 

Orvie nodded. These were all the simple funda¬ 
mentals of taking off. 

Yet the warning was a good one. He had never 
taken off with high trees facing him, and the effect 
was rather terrifying. His impulse was to get off the 
water as quickly as possible and to climb at once, 
but he remembered his chief’s advice, leveled out for 
a hundred yards, and then pulled the joy-stick back 
for the rise. Having gained speed, the Dan’l Boone 


INTO THE WILDS 


135 

responded instantly and soared well above the tree- 
tops with a good 80 feet to spare. 

The boy looked round to catch Logan’s approving 
nod. 

The course over the unmarked woods was by com¬ 
pass— the Dan’l Boone carried an earth-inductor 
compass as well as the ordinary magnetic compass, 
for there is a good deal of iron in the soil of the North 
Country — and this was a little new to Orvie. But 
he held his course well, and only twice did Logan 
pass him a little note as to change of course. 

At one point, going over a low hogback, the air 
was rather bumpy, but the Bellanca was wonderfully 
stable, and Orvie had not the slightest fear of bumps. 
He had gone to 2000 feet altitude, giving plenty of 
room in case he should come to any “holes” in the air. 

The landing at Lac du Bonnet was good enough, 
though Orvie very nearly made a “pancake” land-. 
ing, stopping the plane a couple of feet in air. But 
fortunately she had still enough flying way, and the 
boy was able to ease her down. There was a little 
more jar than there should have been, but this was not 
a serious matter. 

“Well need those pontoons again, Son,” was his 
chief’s only comment. As a matter of fact, he was 
quite pleased, for the boy had shown himself quite 


136 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

air-easy; and the three essentials in good flying are 
knowledge, confidence, and care. 

Logan took the plane himself in the afternoon, to 
run into Cleveland where they were to pick up the 
two hunters, not only because they were going to run 
over several cities, but also to give Orvie a rest, for an 
early start was to be made in the morning, and the 
boy would have to overhaul the plane before going to 
bed. 

Inspection was less fun, this time! Orvie was 
tired after the two days’ flying and the excitement. 
Perfectly sure that the engine and plane were all 
right, he was tempted, almost, to give just a cursory 
look-over. 

“It’s good enough!” he said to himself, half-aloud. 

Then he jumped as though something had bitten 
him. 

The old flying saying came back to his memory: 

“Good enough is bad enough and may kill; good 
is doubtful and may crash; perfect is the only margin 
of safety.” 

And he had actually thought of “good enough,” and 
had almost yielded to the temptation! 

It gave him an inward scare. He took a good two 
hours on that inspection, not because it was really 
necessary, but to punish himself. 


INTO THE WILDS 


i 37 

“Anything wrong?” asked Logan, when the boy 
came in. 

“No —.” Then he told exactly what had happened. 

“ ’Tis a true saying,” said his chief. “There’s 
nothing safer than flying, when every detail is right, 
but when you’re not sure, and you’ve got other 
people’s lives in charge — ! I’m thinking, Orvie, 
that if you had done your inspection carelessly, you’d 
have been in a sweat of anxiety all to-morrow, just 
wondering if anything would happen. If you’ve 
done your uttermost, there’s nothing more to worry 
over.” 

And the Bellanca gave a good account of herself, 
next day. 

Neither of the hunters had ever been up in the air 
before, and they looked a little doubtful on seeing 
the youthfulness of the “Flying Mechanic.” But 
Logan was doing the piloting, and Logan was an ace. 
The Dan'l Boone lifted like a bird, and settled down 
on the waters of Noocumpook Lake as smoothly as 
a heron. 

The hunters were loud in praise of Logan’s pilot¬ 
ing, and swore that they’d never travel any other way 
than by plane thereafter. 

“Providing we can always get such a pilot!” de¬ 
clared one enthusiastically. 


138 with the u. s. aviators 

“And a good mechanic/’ said Logan soberly. 
“The best pilot can do nothing with ‘bugs’ in the 
engine or with a strained plane.” 

“Your son, I suppose?” queried the other, as a sort 
of excuse for the “mechanic’s” youthfulness. 

“No,” said Logan. “I’ve taken him for the sum¬ 
mer because he’s got the goods. He has my perfect 
confidence.” 

The hunters looked with a new respect at Orvie, 
and the boy, as he threw himself on the balsam 
boughs, could think of no greater happiness. 



Chamberlin’s Plane in Flight. 











Few planes—if any—can show such Transatlantic, Transpacific, Arctic, and Continental 

non-stop records. 








CHAPTER VIII 


The Stray Bullet 

Early next morning the hunters started off, with 
Logan and the Cree Indian guide. One of the hunt¬ 
ers, a Cleveland broker, offered Or vie one of his spare 
guns, but the boy shook his head. 

“Thanks ever so much, Mr. Porrit,” he said, “but 
I’ve got to overhaul the ‘bus’.” 

“Why? Did anything go wrong yesterday?” 

“Nothing! But a plane and its engine have got 
to be overhauled after every day’s flying.” 

“Do they get out of order so easily as that?” 

“No,” answered the boy. “But if they do, it can 
be serious, especially in country like this where you 
can’t be sure of getting to a landing-field, or a handy 
lake. If a motor-car stalls, the brakes are there. 
If anything happens to a locomotive, the brakeman 
can flag an approaching train. The car can be 
towed home; a relief crew can get to the train. But 
a plane and its engine must be in perfect condition, 
all the time, for there’s no kind of rescue that can get 
to it in the air.” 


139 


1 4 o WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

‘To-morrow, then!” said the hunter, by no means 
dissatisfied to find the young mechanic so conscien¬ 
tious. 

“Gladly, sir,” answered Orvie, “I’ve never had a 
chance at a moose.” 

Next morning the party started off. The hunting 
of the day before had been fruitless, but, on the way 
home, the hunters had come across fresh moose- 
tracks, and it was with high hopes that they started 
off. The Cree led, the two hunters followed, Logan 
and Orvie brought up the rear. 

“What’s the matter, Mr. Logan?” queried the boy, 
after they had tramped for a little time in silence. 
“You seem worried.” 

“I am worried,” said his chief. “Somebody put 
a lighted cigarette on my ‘mascot’ silk stocking, last 
night, and burned a hole in it.” 

Although Orvie, himself, had not reached the 
point of superstition which characterizes most avia¬ 
tors, he knew how much stress airmen put on their 
mascots. 

“The one you carried all through the war?” 

Logan nodded. Of Irish stock, he was to the full 
as superstitious as most. Not for the world would he 
have allowed any one to bring a flower aboard his 
plane, for flowers suggest a funeral; a good many 


THE STRAY BULLET 


141 

stories can be told to bear out the belief. An aviator 
has no objection to having his photograph taken 
after a flight, but woe betide the newspaperman who 
is so foolish as to snap a camera before one! The 
“last flight” is always feared, and few things have 
done more to fasten this belief on the flying world 
than the astounding number of accidents which hap¬ 
pened on Armistice Day, though the Germans had 
surrendered the evening before and firing was to 
cease at eleven o’clock in the morning. 

The horseshoe is often carried as a good-luck sign. 
Young animals, puppies, kittens, and even baby mice 
are supposed to bring fortune; but it is bad luck to 
carry birds — though one of the Polish aces always 
took up with him an imperial Pekin drake. A 
“magic square” is believed to have a protecting ef¬ 
fect, and so has a wedding ring — but it must belong 
to some one else. But a silk stocking — not a new 
one, but one that has been worn — remains perhaps 
the favorite of all among American fliers. The best 
omen is believed to be the shadow of the plane re¬ 
flected on the clouds below, especially when it is 
surrounded with the prismatic colors of the rainbow, 
due, probably, to the disturbance of the air by the 
violent currents set up by the plane. 

Not for any money which could be offered to him 


i 4 2 with the u. s. aviators 

would Logan have flown that day, and it was clear 
that he was anxious and out of sorts. 

Presently, from ahead, came the hoarse hoot of a 
barred owl. 

Logan stopped dead. 

“That’s Pete!” he said, in a whisper. Then, in 
answer to the boy’s look, he went on, in the same tone, 
“Owls don’t hoot in daylight! Circle to the left, 
Orvie, just as quietly as you can. I’ll go up-wind. 
If there’s anything stirring, it’ll get my scent and 
break down toward the hunters.” 

The boy nodded and started off, but Logan beck¬ 
oned him back. 

“You’re down-wind,” he said. “All the rest of the 
party is up-wind to you. Remember! No matter 
how good a chance you get for a shot, if the animal 
is up-wind, keep your finger off the trigger. A rifle 
bullet carries far, and, in the scrub, some of us might 
be right in range. Fire down-wind all you like.” 

“Right-o! ” agreed the boy, and started off on moc- 
casined feet, going as softly as he could. 

Away from Logan, the woods seemed strangely 
quiet, and Orvie remembered how he had been told 
that every creature of the woods knows telepathieally 
the danger from a sportsman hunting to kill, while 
remaining indifferent to a lumberman carrying noth- 


THE STRAY BULLET 143 

ing but his axe. Twice he heard the piteous and 
plaintive cry of a loon — that despair of the keenest 
marksman — but otherwise the woods were silent. 

Then, suddenly, quite suddenly, for he had heard 
no sound, a cow moose materialized on his right. As 
the boy was not up-wind, she had not smelt him, but 
she had evidently caught scent of the other hunters 
and was snorting quietly and trying to get direction. 

The boy’s rifle came up to his shoulder. The 
moose was not more than fifty yards away, the 
shoulder and head were clearly visible. 

He could not miss! 

Then Logan’s warning came to him. He must not 
shoot up-wind! 

Regretfully, he lowered the barrel of the rifle, and 
huddled himself against the trunk of a tree. 

For fully two minutes the cow moose stood mo¬ 
tionless, then some wandering puff of wind brought 
her the hated scent more definitely, and, disregarding 
noise, she crashed down-wind through the branches. 
Whether she saw or smelt him, Orvie could not tell, 
but, though she must have passed within thirty yards 
of him, he could see nothing of her. 

The boy brought his rifle to the ready, and stole 
forward again. 

Far to the right arose a chatter from the whisky- 


i 4 4 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

jacks — Canada jays or moose-birds — clamorously 
informing all denizens of the woods that enemies 
were abroad. Arrant thieves, as well as chatter¬ 
boxes, whisky-jacks are not loved by hunters. Red 
squirrels came down to the lower branches and told 
Orvie what they thought of him — it may be a good 
thing that Man does not understand squirrel- 
language, for it sounds most uncomplimentary. 

Here and there, where the ground was soft, tracks 
appeared which Pete, the Indian trapper, might have 
deciphered, but Orvie was not a good enough woods¬ 
man. One track, certainly, was bear — that was 
unmistakable — but the boy could not tell whether 
it were a day or a week old. It is only in winter, after 
a light fall of wet snow, that the animals are forced to 
tell all the secrets of their daily lives. 

The morning wore on. The sky became clouded 
and the air sultry, the weather that black-flies and 
mosquitoes especially enjoy. This was Orvie’s in¬ 
troduction to that intolerable pest of the North 
Woods, the tiny blood-sucking midge or “black-fly,” 
which, swarming in millions, makes life almost un¬ 
bearable at certain seasons of the year. A mosquito 
is annoying, but the black-fly — as hunters know — 
seems to have a peculiar capacity for arousing the 
vilest temper. “He smiles in a smoke of black-flies” 


THE STRAY BULLET 


145 

is a Cree saying to suggest that a man is so insensible 
as to be almost an idiot. 

Orvie was not exempt. He was ready to break 
down and cry, not from pain, but from pure rage. 
He began to understand the stories of men having 
gone mad in the North Woods during the sultry sea¬ 
son of late summer. 

Suddenly, two shots rang out, one very shortly 
after the other, and, afterwards, a cry. 

Orvie stopped and listened. 

He had often heard that a wounded moose 
screamed like a man. The story was evidently true. 

As all the game would have broken from cover at 
the sound of the shots, there was no need for further 
silence or care. Guiding himself by the sound of the 
shots and by the direction of the wind, he forged his 
way through the scrub to where he had heard the 
shooting. 

Half-way there, three revolver shots rang out in 
quick succession: 

“Bang! — Bang! — Bang!” 

They came from some distance away. 

Orvie broke into a run. It was the signal of dis¬ 
tress, the S. 0 . S. of the woods! 

Presently he burst into a clearing, close to a tiny 
lake, not a hundred yards across. 


146 with the u. s. aviators 

On the ground lay a fine stag moose, and, beside 
it, Porrit, one of the hunters, was standing. He was 
not looking at the kill, but was shading his eyes with 
his hand and looking along the shore of the lake. 

He turned as the boy came up. 

“Merrill’s gone crazy,” he said, bluntly, as Orvie 
came running up, “at least it looks like it. He blazed 
at the moose without even bothering to take aim, and 
I believe Logan has been hit.” 

“I heard the shots,” said the boy, panting. 
“Where is he?” 

The hunter laid a restraining hand on Orvie’s 
shoulder. 

“This isn’t the time to separate,” he said. “Mer¬ 
rill’s gone with Pete. If Logan is hurt — and he 
wouldn’t have called for help if he weren’t — Pete 
is the only one who knows the woods.” 

“But, Mr. Porrit, I must — ” 

“I know how you feel, Lad. But trust me, wait! 
Pete’ll be back soon enough, and we’ll know the 
worst — or the best.” 

“What happened to Mr. Merrill?” 

“Black-flies,” said the hunter succinctly. “He’s 
never been in this part of the country before. They 
got on his nerves. We stalked this stag, and I got a 
fair, full shot at it. Merrill was down that way, 


THE STRAY BULLET 


147 

twenty yards or so, and as the stag gave a few bounds 
he must have shot at the sound — I don't think he 
can have seen the beast, for, a second afterwards, I 
heard Logan's cry." 

“Then it wasn't the moose!" 

“That cried out? No. They do bellow humanly, 
sometimes. But this one dropped without a 
sound. . . . 

“Ah! There's Pete coming now!" 

The Indian came along the shore at the dog-trot 
which looks so slow but which eats up miles, and can 
be maintained so long. 

“Well?" 

“He — is— much hurt," said the guide in his 
correct but stilted English. “The bullet — is — 
here." 

He pointed to his chest. 

Porrit whistled. 

“Through the lungs! Is he bleeding much, Pete?" 

“With — good luck — yes. Blood — flows out¬ 
side; not inside." 

“If there's no internal bleeding, that's a comfort." 

“What do?" queried the Indian. 

Porrit shrugged his shoulders. 

“I don't know any more about surgery than a 
baby," he said. “And the first-aid kit is in camp." 


148 with the u. s. aviators 

“I’ve passed the Boy Scout First Aid exams/’ put 
in Orvie, eagerly. 

“I'm afraid that isn’t much use for a punctured 
lung. Merrill doesn’t know any more about it than 
I do. And/’ he added in a tone of acute remorse, 
“it was I who persuaded Merrill to come on this 
trip!” 

There was a moment’s silence. 

“Can’t you do anything, Pete?” 

“I — can stop — bleeding,” said the Indian. 
“Outside wound — I can fix; inside wound — I can¬ 
not fix. Boss needs doctor — quick.” 

“And we’re two hundred miles from anywhere!” 

“That’s not far by plane!” said Orvie eagerly. 

“Yes, but who’s going to pilot?” 

“I’ve got a pilot’s license,” said the boy. 

“You have? Bring the plane here, then, and we’ll 
rush Logan back.” 

Orvie eyed the little lake with a critical eye. 

“I can’t, from here,” he said. “At a pinch I might 
be able to make a landing, but I’m not sure about 
taking off.” 

“Why not? It’s a seaplane, isn’t it?” 

“There’s not enough run,” said the boy. “And 
the wind is wrong, besides.” 

The Indian nodded. 


THE STRAY BULLET 


149 

“One big lake/’ he put in, “not far — one mile. 
Carry — boss — there. Boy — bring — the air¬ 
plane.” 

“But can you find your way to the camp alone?” 
queried Porrit. 

“I might — ” began Orvie dubiously. 

“No!” said Pete authoritatively. “You — not 
find. We make — stretcher. Carry — boss.” 

Then his eye fell on the moose. 

“We leave — moose — here; wolves smell — 
come.” His roving glance caught sight of a sturdy 
young tree. 

Orvie caught his look and guessed the meaning. 

“Do you want to string the moose up, same as we 
do deer?” 

“Moose — very heavy,” said Pete doubtfully. 

“It’s only a few yards. We can drag it.” 

“Try!” said the Indian. 

Using all their strength the three managed to roll 
and drag the moose under the tree. Orvie climbed 
it, with the end of the long rope which the Indian had 
wound about his waist after the fashion of deer- 
hunters, and the three men dragged on the rope, using 
a double purchase, until the tree was bent down as 
far as it would go without cracking. The hind legs 
of the moose were tied together, lifted to a crotch 


150 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

of the tree, and the rope loosened. The tree, spring¬ 
ing back to an upright position, lifted the moose off 
the ground beyond the reach of a wolf’s jump. 

Orvie was all impatience, for he thought this was a 
waste of valuable time with Logan lying dangerously 
wounded, but the whole affair had not taken more 
than ten minutes. This done, Pete led the way to 
where Logan lay. 

Merrill was pacing backwards and forwards dis¬ 
tractedly. He hurried towards them. 

“How is he?” queried Porrit. 

“Dying, I think. And I — I’ve murdered him!” 

“Nonsense,” said the broker. “Pete says he’ll get 
over it all right. Here, take a swig at the flask! 
Lucky I brought some from Lac du Bonnet.” 

Orvie had rushed over to where Logan lay. The 
pilot was unconscious. Lying beside his hand was 
the silk stocking with the hole burned in it. The boy 
gave a superstitious shiver. Should he take it? No. 
Better not interfere. He shoved the mascot back 
into Logan’s pocket. 

Under Pete’s orders, the three rapidly cut some 
withes and saplings, and a rough stretcher was hur¬ 
riedly made, with a projecting stick on either corner. 
Logan was laid on this — he did not come to con¬ 
sciousness at all as they lifted him — and with Pete 


THE STRAY BULLET 151 

and the boy at one end, and the two city hunters at 
the other, they carried him for a mile or so, coming 
out, as the Indian had said, to the borders of a lake. 

Orvie gave a sigh of relief. 

“This is all right/’ he said. “I can take off from 
here. But how shall we get him into the fuselage?” 

“You — bring — canoe,” said Pete. “I show.” 
Then, turning to the two men, he added, “You — 
make fire. Big smoke. Airplane — find easily.” 
To the boy: “Come! Walk quick!” 

With an unerring instinct the Indian struck out 
directly across the woods. Orvie was young and 
lithe, but, over and over again, Pete had to stop to 
let the boy catch up. Orvie was out of breath and 
his legs were trembling from the pace when they 
reached the camp. They had made it in less than 
half the time it had taken them to come. 

With the other Indian, the camp cook, helping, 
the canoe was lashed above the fuselage, and, less 
than ten minutes after their arrival, the plane was in 
the air. The Cree had never been up, before, but he 
accepted everything with the stolidity of his race. 
The smoke of the fire lighted by the hunters guided 
them, and the plane flew rapidly to the lake on the 
shores of which the wounded man lay. 

Orvie did not leave the cockpit. It was amazing 


152 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

to him to see with what apparent slowness, but real 
deftness, Pete managed to get Logan into the canoe, 
and, helped by Porrit, to lift the wounded man into 
the fuselage. The stretcher was lashed across it, and 
Logan lashed to the stretcher. He came to, during 
the process, and groaned. 

“It’s all right, Mr. Logan,” said the boy cheerfully. 
“All aboard!” 

“Pm coming, too!” said Merrill. “IPs all my 
fault, and I want to see he gets every attention.” 

But Orvie shook his head. 

“I can’t take you, sir,” he said. 

“Why not? The plane carried us all, before; why 
can’t it carry us now?” 

“It isn’t the weight,” the boy explained. “But 
I’ve only got a private pilot’s license. I can take 
Mr. Logan, because he’s the owner of the plane. But 
if I take you, I’ll be carrying a passenger, and that 
would cost Mr. Logan his license. Government rules 
are iron-clad.” 

“But — ” 

“Every minute spent in talk is dangerous,” broke 
in Porrit. “If the boy won’t take you, that’s an end 
of it. Wliere are you going, Lee?” 

“To Lac du Bonnet, sir,” said Orvie. “It may be 
about twenty minutes farther than the nearest town, 


THE STRAY BULLET 153 

but I’ve landed there, before. There’s a doctor there, 
I know.” 

“Off with you, then! Good luck!” 

The propellers whirled, the engines broke into a 
roar, the Dan’l Boone swished slowly, then rapidly 
through the water, rose, and cleared the trees easily. 

“Good boy,” said the Indian approvingly. “Now 
— go skin — moose.” 

Merrill, conscience-stricken, had little heart for the 
task, but it was his duty to help, and the three men 
returned to where the moose had been slung to a 
bending tree. 

Long before they had reached the place, the plane 
was out of sight. Orvie had risen high and was run¬ 
ning with all three throttles open to gain time. The 
weather was threatening, and the boy’s one fear was 
that he would run into clouds or rain. He remem¬ 
bered his Flying Instructor’s warning about being 
caught in thick weather over unknown country. 

But fortune favored him. The cloud lay high. 
The ceiling was fully 800 feet, plenty of room to fly. 
He was immensely relieved to find that his close ob¬ 
servation of the land below, on his three trips, had 
not been in vain, and he picked up one mark after 
another. It was still full light when the Lac du 
Bonnet came in sight. As soon as he turned off the 


154 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

motor for a glide, he took out his own revolver and 
fired three times. 

From the sheds, men came running, and a couple 
of boats pushed off. 

The Bellanca slid down to a perfect landing, and 
the boats took her and snubbed her to the pier. 

No words were wasted. The stretcher told the 
whole story. 

“Lucky we got the infirmary fixed,” said one. 
“The nurse got here just two weeks ago.” 

“And is there a doctor here?” 

“Right on the ground. Easy with that stretcher. 
A little higher, Tom! Now then, boys! To the in¬ 
firmary. Don’t bother about changing to a regular 
stretcher — that’ll go through the door, all right.” 

The news had spread and the doctor came hurry¬ 
ing from his little frame shack, for the permanent 
buildings of this advanced post were not yet all built. 
One man ran ahead and had notified the nurse — 
there was but one — and when the stretcher reached 
the place, everything was ready. 

Logan was lifted to the bed. 

The doctor’s examination was brief. 

“Dangerous,” he said, “but not fatal. The bullet 
struck one of the upper ribs and glanced up. If it 
had struck an inch lower or glanced downwards, I 


THE STRAY BULLET 


X S 5 

wouldn’t be so ready to answer. But I think we’ll 
be able to pull him through, unless some complica¬ 
tion occurs.” 

Orvie heaved a deep sigh of relief. His flight 
would not be in vain. 

“When did this happen?” the doctor asked, not 
looking up, and busying himself with the patient. 

“About one o’clock, Doctor.” 

“Whereabouts?” 

“Some miles from our camp on Lake Noocum- 
pook.” 

“H’m. Far enough away! Well, if there’d been 
any delay and you hadn’t got him here so quickly, 
he wouldn’t have had much chance. If we get the 
patient through, Boy — and I believe we shall — 
he’ll owe his life to you, and to the Wright Brothers 
who taught the world to fly.” 


CHAPTER IX 


A FOREST-FIRE RESCUE 

In the establishment of the camp of Noocumpook, 
Logan had put in an efficient receiving radio set, but 
it had been installed in the anticipation that either he 
or Orvie would be on hand to receive messages. Un¬ 
der the conditions, there was no way of sending word 
to Merrill from Lac du Bonnet that his victim had a 
chance to recover. 

Next morning, Orvie was ready to fly back, but the 
doctor was not quite so hopeful as the day before. 
The bullet had been extracted, but there was a good 
deal of fever, and the boy shrewdly suspected that 
the doctor had not told him everything. 

“Wait a day or so/’ he was advised, “and then you 
can fly back. I shouldn’t be surprised if the city men 
wanted to return, right away. The accident must 
have taken a good deal of zest out of their hunting.” 

This suggestion set Orvie thinking. He couldn’t 
bring back the passengers, himself, for his private 
pilot’s license did not give him the right to do so. He 

156 ! 


A FOREST-FIRE RESCUE 


157 

did not want to ask any of the local pilots to take the 
plane, for “Lake Noocumpook” was not on any of the 
maps, and, having discovered a first-rate hunting 
country, Logan desired to keep the information for 
himself and his clients. 

The boy, who had a knack of making friends, con¬ 
fided his problem to the doctor, and suggested that 
perhaps he could persuade his father to act as pilot 
until Logan was better. 

“But,” said the boy, “there isn’t any place to land 
a seaplane near my home, though we’ve got a very 
decent landing-field. And to go by boat and rail 
from here will take an age! ” 

“Nothing easier,” said the doctor. “My brother 
has a three-seater Vought — a Corsair, I believe it 
is — and he’d like nothing better than a little spin 
like that. I’ll ring him up on the ’phone. You can 
ride, I suppose?” 

“Horseback? Sure!” 

“All right. If Jack’s not busy, you can ride over 
to his place — it’s only about eight miles from here — 

while he’s tuning up.” 

The doctor came back a few minutes later. 

“Fine!” he announced. “Jack’s more than will¬ 
ing. I’ve told one of the men to saddle a pony. 
Down the lake trail, first fork to the left, and straight 


158 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

on till you come to a crossroads. Turn sharp to the 
right, and the house is only a couple of hundred yards 
away.” 

“Ever so much obliged — ” 

“Glad to do it,” said the doctor. “Logan’s an old 
friend of mine, and I’m glad to help him out, if I can.” 

Bursting with delight at the thought of a gallop, 
Orvie hurried to the stables. He was astride in a 
moment, and away. The little mare was mettle¬ 
some, and made good time over the soft forest road. 
When Orvie came to the crossroads he heard the quiet 
hum of idling engines. He turned sharp and rode 
straight up to the plane. 

“You’re the youngster who rushed a wounded man 
from the North Woods?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“And you want to get your father to replace Matt 
Logan while he’s laid up? Is that it?” 

“I think that’s what would please Mr. Logan best.” 

“Your father a pilot?” 

Orvie laughed. 

“Congressional Medal of Honor for Air Service in 
the War!” 

“ ’Nuff said. Hop in. Where do we have to go?” 

“Waxen, Ohio. Fifty miles from Cleveland.” 

“All right. Here we go! ” 


A FOREST-FIRE RESCUE 159 

The Vought Corsair, a most efficient biplane type, 
climbed up powerfully and swiftly. Running at a 
good 120 per hour, it ate up the distance, and its 
owner brought her down with perfect ease on the 
fields behind Orvie’s home. 

Seeing a strange plane land, Orvie’s father came 
hurrying out, fearing that there might be some bad 
news of the boy. He was relieved when his son 
jumped out and ran to meet him. 

“Oh, Father!” he burst out breathlessly. “Matt 
Logan’s been shot, wounded, not fatally though. 
The doctor says he’s going to get all right again. 
Can’t you take the Dan’l Boone until he’s all right 
again?” 

“Eh! What’s that? Logan wounded? Orvie, 
you bring out news like a machine-gun! Control 
yourself, Son.” 

He stepped forward to meet the visiting aviator, 
who had just climbed out of the cockpit. 

“I’m Dr. Tam MacTavish’s brother, Duncan 
MacTavish,” said the stranger, introducing himself. 
“I’ve heard Matt Logan talk of you, Major Lee, 
many’s the time.” 

The two men shook hands. 

“Is Logan badly hurt, do you know?” the Major 
asked. 


160 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 


“Girdly so, according to what Tam telephoned me 
this morning. It’s no’ canny have a bullet through 
the lungs. But Tam thinks he’ll recover, Providence 
willing!” 

“How did it happen?” 

“Out shooting moose, Father,” put in Orvie tu¬ 
multuously. “One of the men got bitten with black- 
flies and got angry and shot wild and hit Mr. Logan. 
And so I brought him back, and Mr. MacTavish 
brought me here for you. The doctor arranged it.” 

“Orvie,” said his father, “you’re talking in such a 
hurry that your words tread on each other’s tails, and 
don’t make sense. Tell me quietly, and properly, 
presently. There’s plenty of time. And it’s not 
showing courtesy to a guest to interrupt that way!” 

“It’s maist excusable,” said the Scotchman, “and 
I dinna think the worse o’ the lad for being anxious 
for the fate of a friend. Logan is a fine man, and it 
would be a Godsend if you could help him, Major 
Lee.” 

“So you’re in Orvie’s plot, too!” said the Major, 
smiling. 

“I’d not hesitate to offer myself,” was the reply, 
“but I’ve no’ the time. I’ve only a private pilot’s 
license, besides. Your going, Major, would mean 
everything to Logan. He’s been putting his faith in 


A FOREST-FIRE RESCUE 161 

what he would earn this summer. He spent all his 
economies on buying that big Bellanca.” 

“I know, I know — ” but there was a doubtful note 
in his voice. 

“You see, Father,” put in Orvie, speaking more 
quietly and reasonably, “it’s this way. There are 
two city hunters up at the camp now: Mr. Merrill, 
who shot Mr. Logan by accident, and his friend, Mr. 
Porrit, a broker from Cleveland. IPs likely that, 
after this accident, they’ll want to come back. In 
four days, too, Mr. Logan had planned to go to St. 
Louis to pick up two hunters for the other camp. 
With a private pilot’s license, I can’t carry passen¬ 
gers; it’s against the law. And if one of the Lac du 
Bonnet’s pilots takes the Dan’l Boone, he’ll know 
just where our camp is, and it won’t be private any 
more.” 

“Now you’re beginning to talk more sensibly! I 
see. Personally, I’m willing enough to go. There’s 
nothing I wouldn’t do for Matt Logan, but — ” 

“Is it your promise to Mother, Dad?” 

“Well, yes; partly.” 

“Oh, I can get her to understand! Let me talk to 
her, Father!” 

“You think you can wheedle her, do you? That 
remains to be seen.” 


162 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

He turned to the visitor, with Southern courtliness. 

“If Mr. MacTavish will do me the honor to come 
in?” 

Seated hospitably on the porch, with a good cigar, 
the Scotchman nodded kindly to Orvie. 

“There, Lad,” he said, “go and talk to your mother. 
I wish you a bonny success, for it would be a pity not 
to finish what you’ve begun so well.” 

“You don’t mind if we leave you a minute?” 

“Why, Major!” 

Rather to her husband’s surprise, Mrs. Lee made 
little objection to the proposed plan, only saying in 
her rather abrupt fashion: 

“If flying is for anything really useful and to be of 
help to some one, of course I shall not stand in the 
way. It is gallivanting in the air for nothing that 
seems to me so silly!” 

This willingness to let her husband go, might, per¬ 
haps, have been more gracefully put, but Mrs. Lee 
had a deep aversion to flying and lived in constant 
fear of accidents. To see Orvie’s passionate interest 
in aviation had been a real cross to her, and she nour¬ 
ished an earnest intention to turn her son towards 
the side of aeronautical engineering, which would 
keep him on the ground instead of in the air. She 
was shrewd enough to see that she would only hurt 


A FOREST-FIRE RESCUE 163 

her own future plans by opposing her husband at this 
time; moreover, for some dim reason of her own — 
queerly enough, most women seem to have it — she 
thought seaplanes much safer than landplanes. 

Over the hastily prepared but substantial dinner, 
Duncan MacTavish’s tactful conversation went far 
to soothe Mrs. Lee’s fears. He was a canny Scotch¬ 
man, commercial and practical to his finger-tips, and 
his whole talk of aviation was as of a business as 
firmly established as the railroads. His matter-of- 
fact manner visualized flying as something actually 
accomplished, with planes running on regular sched¬ 
ules in a sober and common-sense way. Major Lee’s 
interest in aviation was always along the line of new 
models, new inventions, new instruments, and record- 
breaking feats, and this had only deepened his wife’s 
beliefs that flying was still in the experimental stage. 

After dinner, Major Lee having hunted up his fly¬ 
ing togs, his papers, and everything necessary, Mrs. 
Lee actually came out willingly to see them off. 
MacTavish had done more to reconcile her to aviation 
in a couple of hours than her husband had been able 
to do in ten years. 

The major himself took the controls, with Mac- 
Tavish’s consent, in order to fulfil the requirements 
of the Department of Commerce, which insists that 


164 with the u. s. aviators 

a pilot must have a certain number of hours of actual 
flight within 60 days prior to piloting passengers. 

Arriving at MacTavish’s home, again, just before 
sundown, Major Lee took the pony which the boy had 
ridden over that morning, and hurried to the in¬ 
firmary, anxious to see his old flying pal. Orvie was 
pressed by Duncan MacTavish to stay to supper, for 
the Scotchman wanted to hear all the details of the 
shooting, and the boy was driven over, later, under 
the moonlight, in an old-fashioned buggy. 

The doctor would make no more encouraging state¬ 
ment about Logan other than to say that his patient 
was not any worse. In order that news of the pa¬ 
tient’s condition might be received at Lake Noocum- 
pook Camp, the Lac du Bonnet radio operator agreed 
to send out a message, at 7:30 sharp, every morning. 

“Be on the job to receive!” he said, decisively, “for 
it’s not usually permitted to send out private mes¬ 
sages.” 

Next morning, with Orvie at the controls — he 
knew the way thoroughly, now — the Dan’l Boone 
rose from the Lac du Bonnet and winged her way 
steadily back over the North Woods to Lake Noocum- 
pook. Much to the boy’s satisfaction, he made a 
perfect landing on the little lake, satisfying even the 
critical requirements of his father. 


A FOREST-FIRE RESCUE 165 

Merrill hurried out in the canoe. 

“He’s going to get well!” shouted Orvie, knowing 
what the hunter’s first question would be. 

Merrill’s reply expressed the profoundness of his 
relief. 

Yet, even so, nothing would tempt him to pick up 
his rifle again, and when, two days later, the doctor’s 
report was a little less favorable, the Cleveland man 
insisted on going to Lac du Bonnet with Major Lee 
and Orvie, the Major as pilot. The other hunter, 
Porrit, remained at the camp with Pete. He had 
never had better sport in his life. 

Fortunately, Logan had told Orvie all his plans 
in detail, and, in a loose-leaf file at the camp, there 
was all the correspondence concerning the summer’s 
arrangements. Major Lee quietly assumed control 
of everything and engaged an old-time Hudson Bay 
Company fur-factor to act as foreman at the camp, 
for Pete was necessarily away most of the day, and 
the Major knew nothing about running a hunting 
camp. 

In ten days, Logan was pronounced out of danger, 
but the doctor forbade him to undertake any exer¬ 
tion. The boy and his father carried on the work, 
and, when there were no passengers aboard, Orvie 
did most of the flying. Keeping as closely to his 


166 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 


wife’s wishes as he could, Major Lee went up only 
when there was actual need, and, as he was an ardent 
fisherman, this stay at Lake Noocumpook gave him a 
welcome holiday. 

The transport of provisions and other supplies was 
left to Orvie, so that, with these trips and with his 
mechanical work, the boy was tremendously busy. 
In the first month’s duties, he only got a chance for 
a full day in the woods four times. 

It was on one of these trips, bringing back supplies, 
that Orvie saw a suspicious cloud in the distance. 
He had taken off with a high wind and a clear sky. 
The cloud was too black for a storm cloud, and not 
dense enough to indicate a squall. A few minutes’ 
further flying, and Orvie saw that it was the smoke 
of a forest fire. 

Immediately the boy remembered the numerous 
accounts he had read of the splendid service rendered 
by airmen to the U. S. Forest Service in times of dan¬ 
ger. Though he was in Canada, the idea came to 
Orvie that he might be of service to the Dominion 
Government. He could, at least, fly over the region, 
locate the exact positions where the flames were fier¬ 
cest, determine the compass direction in which they 
were travelling, and then, dropping back to Lac du 
Bonnet, he could give the detailed information there. 


A FOREST-FIRE RESCUE 167 

The wireless station could get the news immediately 
to District Forest Headquarters, and the information 
might be helpful. Even if it were private forest 
ground — as was most likely — it would be to the 
national interest to try to stop the blaze. 

Airplanes have been used with very great effect in 
the U. S. Forest Service, especially covering those 
parts of the National Forests where trails have not 
yet been cut, or where, by reason of a ravine or a wide 
river, it is necessary to make a long detour in order 
to find out the points of greatest danger. An air¬ 
plane can skim over the forest and return to a landing 
base in an hour or so, with a plotted map showing 
exactly the places where the fire is burning fiercest, a 
matter not always easily to be determined from the 
ground, especially if the wind is blowing toward the 
observer and hiding his view in clouds of rolling 
smoke. The airplane observer, flying above the 
smoke — especially if there be a high wind — can 
see the line of fire with perfect definition. 

But it is not only in matters of danger, such as 
forest fires, that the airplane has proved of enormous 
benefit. A party under Lieut. Wyatt, of the U. S. 
Navy, with two Loening amphibians, undertook the 
photographic mapping of the timber and water¬ 
power possibilities of a section of Alaska, for the U. S. 


168 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

Forest Service and the U. S. Geological Survey com¬ 
bined. They took over 40,000 aerial photographs, 
with an accuracy and certainty which gave the Forest 
Service more detailed information in a single summer 
than twenty years’ work with large field-crews could 
have done. 

Orvie had read every line of matter dealing with 
Forest Service surveying and fire-observation by air¬ 
plane, and the sight of this forest fire in the distance 
was a personal chance too good to be overlooked. 
The day was young, his fuel-tanks were nearly full, 
and he knew that both his father and Logan would 
back him up for time spent in a detour which might 
prove useful. 

He banked, turned to the right, and climbed, in or¬ 
der to make a circling sweep over the whole of the 
threatened area. 

"It’s bigger than I thought! ” the boy muttered, as 
he came closer and saw that the fire had spread, first, 
in a wide “V” and was roaring ahead with great 
velocity. 

He took still more altitude, prudently, figuring that 
the air above the heated area might be bumpy. 

“Whew! It’s a whale of afire!” 

Carefully he spiralled to a lower altitude to see 
more clearly the direction of the fire, and, as he passed 


A FOREST-FIRE RESCUE 169 

above a whirling cloud of smoke, and peered through 
a gap to the ground below, suddenly his hands 
clenched on the controls. 

“Isn’t that a settlement!” 

He dropped lower. 

No doubt of it! 

Right between the converging lines of the “V” of 
fire was a small lumbering town or settlement, not 
very big, but containing, probably, a couple of hun¬ 
dred persons. 

He flew on, watching the ground rather than what 
was ahead. 

Suddenly a blast of heated air, furnace hot, and 
swirling upwards from the fire like an eruptive col¬ 
umn, hit the plane from below. 

The Bellanca rocked badly. 

Instinctively, Orvie pulled the joy-stick back, to 
climb, but, startled by the fiery gust, he jerked it 
back too fast. 

The plane nosed up, stalled, and broke into a 
tail-spin! 

Right over the fire! 

Well was it for Orvie that he knew something of 
air tactics, though he had not learned aerobatics yet. 
But this, at least, he knew! He shut off the engines 
to make the plane nose-heavy. 


170 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

Down she dropped toward the flames — and Orvie 
had not much altitude! 

But, with the engines stopped, she levelled as she 
dropped, and the moment she came near enough to 
an even keel, the boy gave her the gun. The en¬ 
gines roared, and, wisely daring, Orvie nosed her 
down a little for added speed, shot through the spark- 
filled smoke, and was across the line of fire and out 
of danger in a second. 

But it had been a narrow escape. 

“So much for being an idiot!” he growled to him¬ 
self. 

With full speed and slight diving impetus, be¬ 
sides, he started to climb, then banked, turned, and, 
circling well out of the zone of smoke, came down 
between the lines of fire on a slow dive, banked and 
turned with great care and swooped lower, until he 
was circling not more than a hundred feet above the 
tree-tops. 

The fire was still some distance away, but racing 
on. 

The people of the settlement ran out of their 
shacks to look at the big tri-motor Bellanca circling 
above them. It was clear that the airplane was 
bringing them some message, and they made signs to 
Orvie to come down and land. Not a person in the 


A FOREST-FIRE RESCUE 171 

place knew the difference between a pontoon and 
landing gear, and they seemed to suppose that a big 
seaplane could come straight down into a small clear¬ 
ing like a stone and shoot up again like a rocket. 

Dropping as low as he could — he did not dare 
come too far, for his one experience of swirling heated 
air had warned him to be cautious — Orvie shut off 
his motors for a minute and shouted. But his voice 
did not carry, and all that he could hear from the 
ground was a confused sound, though every one was 
shouting. 

What could he do? 

He could not land, and, even if he could have done 
so, he could not have taken off more than three or 
four persons at most, thus rendering but little 
service. 

Up the boy went again, this time circling fairly 
high to get a bird’s-eye view of the fire and to study 
the lie of the land. On the left leg of the “V,” a 
shift of wind or a ground current, seizing upon some 
heavy timber and brush along a flat, was sending a 
tongue of fire at an angle which threatened to close 
the “V.” On the right leg, the timber was sparser, 
and rougher country stopped the progress of the fire 
a little. The danger was that the little town would 
be entirely surrounded. 


172 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

Back he cruised over the settlement and carefully 
noted the compass bearings. 

He had his plan — though whether it would work 
or not, he had no idea. 

With his jack-knife — he did not wait to get at the 
tools — he unscrewed the smaller of the two com¬ 
passes from the instrument-board. He broke the 
point of his knife, twice, in doing it, but that was no 
great matter. Then he took out his handkerchief. 
Fortunately, it was a fairly big one, even if a bit grimy. 
From the emergency tool-kit he took some insulation 
wire, and cut off four short lengths and four a little 
longer. These he twisted into hooks, and stuck 
each of the shorter hooks into the corners of his 
handkerchief, the longer ones into the middle of the 
sides. 

This was not done without difficulty and a good 
deal of danger. Circling, thus, between the two 
lines of fire, the air was bumpy and uncertain, and 
the plain seemed like a living thing — little at her 
ease. The controls needed constant attention, light 
touches, but necessary. It took tricky piloting. 
With a plane less stable than a Bellanca, it would 
have been even more perilous. 

The inevitable aviator’s pad and pencil was the 
next thing, and Orvie scribbled hastily: 


A FOREST-FIRE RESCUE 173 

“Fire creeping around you fast. No time to lose! 
Everybody leave the town. Go NNE half E. 
Keep compass direction exactly. If you go West of 
that, you’ll get caught. Hurry!” 

He wrapped this note around the compass, 
wrapped a rag around it and knotted it tightly, stuck 
the other ends of his wire hooks into the rag — test¬ 
ing each for length — and got ready to drop this tiny 
improvised parachute. 

To be sure of having plenty of speed to lift over the 
trees, he circled to the lee of the town, and came down 
on a steep glide toward the clearing, coming to 
within fifty feet of the ground. Allowing for speed, 
he let the message drop. 

At first it looked as though the whole thing would 
drop sideways, but the little handkerchief parachute 
took the air, and though it wobbled downwards in 
clumsy fashion, yet the spread was enough to check 
the fall of the compass. Orvie had been afraid that 
if he threw the instrument down, simply, with a note, 
the compass needle would be jolted off its bearings. 

At the speed he was going, the boy could not fol¬ 
low the drop and he had not time, for he was driving 
straight for the fire. He did not dare to turn, for 
he was headed straight for the point of the “V”. 
But he had terrific speed, and he put the Dan’l Boone 


174 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

at a slight climb with all three motors at full throttle. 

She roared over the line of fire like a meteor. 

Circling back, Or vie saw the parachute fluttering 
down. A man dashed forward, caught it, read the 
note, looked up and waved his hat as the boy came 
speeding overhead. 

The message had been understood. 

From up in the air, Orvie could see the people 
running from house to house. They had already 
been alarmed, but, owing to an intervening ridge, 
they had seen the fire only on one side and had not 
realized that they were being surrounded. 

Over their heads, Orvie flew backwards and for¬ 
wards in a straight line in the direction where the 
fugitives ought to go, and his heart beat with satis¬ 
faction when he saw the people trooping out, one man 
with the compass at the head, and keeping the line 
which he had indicated. 

The fugitives had quite a distance to go to reach 
the ridge, and the fire was now roaring towards 
them. As the fleeing men and women got on the 
slopes, they saw, for the first time, the fire behind. 
There was no further need to urge hurry. The 
flames were only about three miles behind them — 
and a forest fire goes like a race-horse — when they 
topped the ridge. 


A FOREST-FIRE RESCUE 175 

They were not yet safe, but the worst of the dan¬ 
ger was past, for a top-fire, roaring thirty miles an 
hour up a hill, is forced to drop and become a ground- 
fire, creeping not more than a mile or two an hour 
down a slope. 

Circling a second time, Orvie dropped another 
message, weighted to a can of sardines — part of his 
supplies: 

“Bear NE now. I can see a bridge over a river, 
and a mile or two ahead I can see a trail.” 

The message was picked up, and a faint sound of 
shouting came to the boy’s ears. 

But the left-hand fire was racing fast, though the 
fugitives were entirely unaware of its speed and di¬ 
rection, and Orvie, watching overhead, began to fear 
that, after all, his warning might be too late. It was 
of no use to drop any further messages bidding them 
hurry, for the settlers were evidently making what 
haste they could. 

They struck the trail, however, and from there on 
progress was faster. 

Orvie, from above, saw all in breathless suspense. 
He, and he alone, could see the agonized race against 
the demon of fire; he, and he alone, had the thrill of 
being able accurately to measure the danger. 


176 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

But the fugitives reached the bridge with fully a 
quarter of an hour to spare and settled down on the 
farther bank to rest. A good road led onwards, and, 
while it was always possible that a big fire might 
jump the river at some point, it would not do so all 
along the line, and it could easily be stopped. 

He dropped one last message: 

“All safe probably, but don’t halt too long. Will 
go to Lac du Bonnet and summon help. Plane Dan’l 
Boone, Orvie Lee, Pilot.” 

And the big Bellanca winged its way onwards, 
high above the flames, its youthful pilot happy in the 
knowledge that he had saved two hundred lives. 



Courtesy of U. S. Air Services. 

Boeing Air Transport Mail, Passenger, and Express Plane flying over the 




Courtesy of Aero Digest. 

The United States Navy’s New Airplane Carrier 

SARATOGA. 






CHAPTER X 

AEROBATICS 

In air-work nowadays, in commercial work espe¬ 
cially, adventures come but rarely, and flying is much 
more a matter of efficiency than of risk. A first-class 
pilot may handle a plane for years, and never have 
any real excitement, other than the nature of his 
work. 

As mechanic, and often as pilot on trips for sup¬ 
plies, Orvie handled the Dan’l Boone all the rest of 
the summer without a single incident of particular 
interest, except, perhaps, the killing of his first moose, 
and that had nothing to do with flying. 

Logan soon took a turn for the better, and he was 
out of the infirmary before three weeks were over. 
The hunting season, which was protracted until late 
in the autumn, passed without a hitch. When the 
camp broke up and the last flight had been made, 
Logan said, as he handed the boy a substantial 
check for his summer’s work: 

“If you want the same job next year, it’s yours!” 

177 


178 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

But Orvie’s satisfaction at his first earned money 
paled before the news which was awaiting him at 
home. 

After the first flush of mutual greetings was over, 
his father said to him, quietly, 

“There’s an important letter here for you, Son.” 

“For me? Who sent it?” 

“The Grand Trunk Lumber Corporation.” 

“I never heard of them.” 

“Well, here’s their letter!” 

And Orvie read: 

“Mr. Orvie Lee, 

“Dear Sir: 

“The full details of your heroic action in braving 
the flames of a forest fire on July 11th. last, and by 
dropping of timely mesages from the airplane Dan’l 
Boone, saving the lives of two hundred Canadian 
residents of Pipestone Creek, has been brought by us 
to the attention of the Dominion Government. 

“For our part, and on behalf of our Corporation, I 
am instructed to inform you that, as a slight token 
of our appreciation, we beg to have the pleasure of 
presenting to you an airplane, fully equipped, of 
whatever make and size you may prefer. We should 
wish it to be named Pipestone, in memory of your 
act of rescue, and we trust to have the honour of re¬ 
ceiving shortly your acceptance of our offer. With 
every expression of our highest esteem, 

“Believe me 


President.” 



AEROBATICS 


179 


“Father! A plane of my own!” 

Major Lee’s eyes gleamed with a pleasure not less 
intense than that of the boy’s. 

From his pocket he took a small box. 

“This is for you, too,” he said. 

Orvie opened it. 

It contained a silver medal. On one side was en¬ 
graved a tree, in flames, with an airplane above it, 
and, around, the date “July 11 , 1928 ”; on the other 
side was engraved: 

“From the grateful residents of Pipestone Creek 
to Orvie Lee, Aviator .” 

“But it’s too much! ” the boy cried. 

“No,” said his father. “I can see just how much 
those lumbermen wanted to do it. There’s no doubt 
that you did save their lives. Treasure it, my boy, 
for a thing like that doesn’t happen twice in any 
man’s lifetime.” 

And his mother added, quietly, 

“It was Providence that set you to want to learn 
to fly.” 

From that day on, Mrs. Lee was heart and soul in 
her son’s career. 

When he returned to the Flying School, a few 
weeks later, Orvie was conscious that his forest-fire 
feat was known, though none of the instructors men- 


180 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

tioned it. Some of his fellow-students begged for 
details, but Orvie pointed out that he had only done 
what any other flyer would have done in his place. 

The boy soon slipped back into the routine of the 
school, completing the work needed to give him the 
license of “airplane mechanic” in addition to the 
“engine mechanic” which he already had. 

But it was when the head of the school, a former 
Professor of Aeronautical Engineering, offered to 
give him a few elementary ideas of Aerodynamics 
that Orvie realized what an enormous amount there 
was to learn. For the first time he saw into the in¬ 
tricacies of aircraft engineering and the magnitude 
of the problems involved. 

“It’s easy for you, now,” said Mr. Zill, “because 
you can get books and learn the results of the last 
twenty years’ experience. The airplane of 1929 is as 
different from the craft flown in the World War as 
that was from the Wright’s first power-driven glider. 
Never has the world seen so powerful a concentration 
on any subject as engineering has given to the air¬ 
plane between 1919 and 1929; never has so great an 
advance been made in so short a time.” 

“Do you regard the present airplane as having 
reached its final form, Mr. Zill?” 

“As an airplane of the present type, yes. Not on 


AEROBATICS 


181 


any empirical grounds of efficiency, but viewed as a 
mechanical and aerodynamical problem. There’s no 
guesswork in a modern plane. Refinements will be 
made — are being made all the time — but the main 
design has become stable and the principles are ac¬ 
curately known.” 

“How about the helicopter, sir?” 

“That’s a different story. A helicopter works on 
the principle of vertical propeller traction, and the 
aerodynamical problems run along quite a different 
branch. No efficient design has as yet been pre¬ 
sented, but he would be a daring man — and a fool¬ 
ish one — who declared that helicopters have no 
future. Helicopter principles can be added to air¬ 
planes — the Auto-Giro of La Cierva has an indirect 
relation to the principles, though it is used as a plane.” 

“What is the principle of the Auto-Giro, sir? I’ve 
never seen one.” 

“None of the later models has been seen in 
America. The Auto-Giro has flown from Paris to 
Brussels, and orders have been placed both by the 
French and English governments — for experi¬ 
mental purpose, I admit — so that this machine is to 
be taken seriously. 

“In a normal-type fuselage, fitted with the usual 
engine and propeller, the wings are replaced by four 


182 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

horizontal planes mounted at right angles to each 
other on a vertical pillar just in front of the centre 
of gravity. They are free to revolve. As soon as the 
machine moves forward by the traction of the pro¬ 
peller, these planes revolve, and, when they have at¬ 
tained sufficient speed, bear the weight of the ma¬ 
chine. Although revolving, they act as ‘wings’ or 
planes, and hence the Auto-Giro is an airplane, not a 
helicopter, for the engine-power is in no sense di¬ 
rected to the horizontal revolving planes. Later 
models have a small auxiliary motor, but that is not 
to create lift. Its great advantage is that its climb 
is much steeper than an ordinary plane, it can de¬ 
scend almost vertically at slow speed, and can — and 
has — been made to come down on a sheet spread on 
the ground without running off the sheet. But, like 
all new inventions, each model shows a distinct im¬ 
provement on the last. There are special devices 
for ailerons and rudder. It seems to have a future. 

“The Hill Tailless Monoplane, with wing tips 
swept far backwards and no rudder or elevator in the 
usual sense of the word, also has shown itself fully 
capable of flight. So far, it has not shown any great 
advantage over normal airplane design — but that is 
not to say that it may not be developed.” 

“And the ornithopter?” 


AEROBATICS 183 

“I should be more ready to declare that to be based 
on a wrong principle.” 

“But birds fly upwards by flapping their wings, 
sir!” 

“They don’t!” 

“What, sir?” 

“They do not!” answered the professor, emphati¬ 
cally. “It is not the flapping of the wing which lifts 
a bird. The history of that error is the history of the 
discovery of true flight-principles. 

“Leonardo da Vinci, the first great pioneer of avia¬ 
tion, wrote in the Sixteenth Century: ‘A bird is an 
instrument working in accordance with mathematical 
law, which instrument it is within the capacity of 
man to reproduce’. That statement is, to this day, 
the basis of all aeronautical engineering. He also 
urged ‘a study of winds’ or air resistance, as a prime 
essential. But his mechanical wing failed, because 
he had mistaken the principle of a bird’s flight. 

“Bishop Wilkins was the next to deal with the 
flapping-wing idea. A scientific thinker, he raised 
the doubt that human muscular power could ever 
raise a man’s weight from the earth, but he foresaw 
one great aviation truth when he said, Tf a flying 
chariot can be raised and rapidity attained, it will be 
easier to keep it in the air than to get it there.’ 


184 with the u. s. aviators 

“The dreamers who hoped to fly by attaching 
wings to their arms next got a sore blow when Borelli 
pointed out that one-sixth of the weight of a bird’s 
body was given to wing-muscles, and less than the 
hundredth part of a man’s. Therefore’, he con¬ 
cluded, ‘wing-flapping by the contraction of muscles 
cannot give out enough power to carry up the heavy 
body of a man.’ But he did not find out, either, the 
mistaken principle on which his predecessors had 
worked. 

“Paucton returned to one of Leonardo’s notions 
and constructed a helicopter. His reasoning was 
sound and his helicopters flew; but they did not fly 
on their own power, and though a helicopter has been 
made which will lift a man, it is beyond measure 
clumsy. 

“To Sir George Cayley must be given the credit 
for showing the fundamental error of the ornithopter 
principle and revealing the principle of the modern 
airplane. He set forward clearly, for the first time, 
that the flapping of a bird’s wing is not for the pur¬ 
pose of sending it upward, but onward, the upward 
movement being the resistance of the air under the 
wings, exactly as in a modern airplane. 

“No bird can fly straight upward by wing-flapping. 

“Henson and Stringfellow constructed an aero- 


AEROBATICS 


185 

plane, driven by steam, which flew, and, from that 
time onward, the history of development is well 
known. Lilienthal, Pilcher, and Chanute developed 
the principles of airplane structure in their gliders, 
Langley developed the principles of aerodynamics, 
and final success came through the light explosive 
engine. 

“With the victory of the Wright Brothers at Kill 
Devil Hill, N. C., when first a power-driven airplane 
carried a man in flight, all interest in ornithopters 
ceased and the true airplane took the centre of the 
stage. But Lilienthal, in Germany; Pilcher, in Eng¬ 
land; and the clever-fingered French sailor, Le Bris, 
who found out the principles of flight, for himself, by 
studying the wing of a dead albatross, and made a 
powerful glider which flew for 200 yards with two 
men; all would have flown with their gliders if the ex¬ 
plosive engine had been available then. One must 
not forget to give credit, too, to Bleriot, who flew 
across the English Channel in a very primitive type 
of monoplane. You remember his reply when some 
one asked him what was the use of it? 

“ ‘What is the use of a baby?’ answered Bleriot.” 

Orvie laughed. 

“The same thing happened not so long ago,” the 
Professor continued. “When ‘looping the loop’ was 


186 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 


only a ‘circus stunt’, a man asked Latham what was 
the use of such tricks. 

“ ‘You’ll fall, one of these days!’ said the pessimist. 

“ ‘How many times does a baby fall when learning 
to walk?’ retorted Latham.” 

“I’m to start ‘stunt-flying’ next week,” commented 
Orvie. 

“I don’t like that word,” said the Professor, frown¬ 
ing. “There isn’t any such thing. Call it ‘Aero¬ 
batics’, if you like. But it’s as necessary a part of an 
airman’s training as it is to know the difference be¬ 
tween a joy-stick and a rudder-bar.” 

“I don’t quite see why, Mr. Zill.” 

“I’ll explain. What’s the principal difference be¬ 
tween progression in the air, and on land or water?” 

“Land or sea travel,” said the boy slowly, picking 
his words, “is in two dimensions; flying is in three 
dimensions.” 

“Right. Therefore it is necessary to know the op¬ 
portunities and difficulties of that third dimension. 
The sole danger of flying is a sudden drop, either be¬ 
cause of some error on the part of the pilot — that’s 
the cause of so many accidents to learners — or to 
structural weakness of the plane, and that’s rare, 
nowadays. 

“Now, let us consider what is the difference be- 


AEROBATICS 187 

tween flying and dropping. How would you put it, 
Orvie? Think before you answer.” 

“In flying, the machine is in control; in dropping, 
it isn’t.” 

“I want a better answer than that. Put it aero- 
dynamically.” 

“Oh, I see what you mean, sir. Flying means that 
the plane is offering a sufficient resistance to the air 
to keep it supported; dropping means that the sur¬ 
faces of resistance — wings, tail, and so forth — 
aren’t giving the support.” 

“Now you’re getting it. One more thing. Can a 
plane get into a position in the air from which a good 
pilot cannot cause it to recover?” 

“I suppose not,” said the boy, but there was a 
doubtful note in his voice. 

“You mustn’t have any doubt of it!” corrected the 
other, sharply. “So long as you’re high enough, any¬ 
where above 500 feet, say, there isn’t a single thing 
a plane can possibly do from which a pilot can’t bring 
her on an even keel. Chamberlin’s famous recovery 
after the three-mile drop caused by Levine in the first 
America-to-Germany flight is a classical case. 

“Therefore, my boy, looping the loop, spinning, 
rolling, and doing such things as the Tmmelman 
turn’, the ‘cart-wheel’ and the ‘falling leaf’ are not 


188 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 


circus tricks. They are doing, voluntarily, what 
may happen to you involuntarily. When you get to 
know — almost instinctively — what ought to be 
done in a voluntary spin or drop, you’ll have knowl¬ 
edge and confidence to do it any time that there is 
urgent need.” 

This little talk made Or vie all the more eager to 
have a chance to do aerobatics, and, the next time he 
went up with a Flying Instructor, he asked about it. 

“If the Chief thinks you’re ready,” said the In¬ 
structor, “I’ll give you a few ideas about side-slipping. 
That’s the commonest happening to a beginner. 
We’ll begin high up, so as to give you plenty of room. 
What does the altimeter read?” 

“Nine hundred feet.” 

“That’s enough. Now, suppose you’ve got to 
make a forced landing in a small field. If you go 
down in the ordinary way, your landing run may be 
too long and you’ll run your nose against a wall — 
good-bye, Plane! For a quick descent with a mini¬ 
mum forward speed, the side-slip is useful.” 

“How do I start it?” 

“Just as if you were a greenhorn and made too 
steep a bank on a slow turn. Slip against the wind, 
remember. If you slip with the wind, you add wind- 
speed to the sideways speed of the plane, and that’ll 


AEROBATICS 189 

make you land with a sideways momentum and likely 
wipe off your landing gear. All set? Bank, then! 
That’s the idea! Now we’re slipping. Feel the side- 
draught?” 

“Rather!” said Orvie, not very easy in his mind. 
“I suppose I ought to keep the nose down?” 

“Certainly, to keep speed. Half-way between the 
normal gliding point and the horizon. That’s about 
right.” 

“Aren’t we getting too far down?” queried the boy, 
nervously. 

“Not a bit. Straighten her out, if you like. Push 
the stick towards the high side — not too jerkily!” 

Almost like magic the plane came level and shot 
forward to a glide, and Orvie opened up the motor 
to gain flying speed. 

“See how easy it is? Try again! Come within 
sixty feet of the ground, this time.” 

Orvie repeated the performance, with more con¬ 
fidence. The quick recovery of the plane had sur¬ 
prised him. 

“Do it half a dozen times or so. By the time 
you’re ready for lunch, you won’t be any more afraid 
of a side-slip than I am.” 

The prophecy was true. After a few maneuvers, 
the boy had acquired perfect confidence. 


1 9 o WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

“Now, for the last time/’ said the old pilot, “make 
a side-slip landing. Here’s a small field below us. 
It’s not more than a hundred yards across, so, if you 
came down in the ordinary way, you’d likely skate 
across the field and smash something. If you side¬ 
slip down, while your dropping momentum will be 
great, your forward speed will be low. Landing 
then, you won’t run far. Try it. Level when your 
lower wing-tip is about fifteen feet from the ground. 
Don’t be afraid; the plane will level all the quicker 
because there’s a small extra cushioning support on 
the air close to the ground. Ready? Off with you! 
Bank! That’s right!” 

The plane side-slipped and hurtled downward. 

“Keep her nose where I said! Ready to level? 
Not too soon! Now! That’s the idea. Drop her 
nose a little. Level a trifle. Lift her nose a hair as 
the wheels touch. Level. Fine!” 

The plane taxied to a standstill in about thirty 
yards. 

“You see, Orvie, once you can thoroughly control 
a side-slip landing, you can use the smallest field. 
It’s imperative, sometimes. Now, taxi back, take off, 
and we’ll go home for lunch. Nicely done! ” 

Two days later, Orvie was given his first lesson 
in looping the loop. 


AEROBATICS 191 

“What’s your altitude?” 

“Three thousand, five hundred.” 

“Plenty high enough. Now remember, while loop¬ 
ing the loop looks difficult, from the ground, it’s about 
the easiest trick there is. We’re flying level now, 
aren’t we?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Keep her level laterally. Now, push forward the 
stick and dive till you add about twenty-five per cent 
to the speed. Keep your rudder straight — that’s 
important. That’s about fast enough. Keep 
straight, and keep level. Now, pull the stick 
back. . . . 

“Easy! Easy! You’ll stall! Throttle down!” 

The engine being cut off, the plane became nose- 
heavy and came down again to a gliding position. 

“Give her gas, now.” 

“What did I do wrong?” queried Orvie. 

“You tried to collapse your wings,” said the In¬ 
structor grimly. “If you’d been flying with a ‘bus’ 
of a few years ago, we’d all have been in a heap on the 
ground — what would be left of us! I didn’t tell you 
to yank the stick back like a railroad switch! You 
pulled so suddenly as to give the planes an enormous 
angle of incidence. The air-flow over the top made 
a whirlwind there, and the underside of the planes got 


192 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

a terrific blow. Don’t ever forget that, when you’re 
going at high speed, the air is every bit as solid as an 
ocean wave. A weakly built plane would have col¬ 
lapsed. I thought you were a pilot, already! ” 

Orvie colored to the roots of his hair. 

“All right,” said the Instructor, more kindly, 
“everybody’s got to learn some time. But a joy¬ 
stick needs a light hand, not a blacksmith’s fist. Try 
it again. Climb for altitude, and then dive for speed. 
That’s better. Pull back steadily. ... Now we’re 
vertical. . . . Push the stick sideways towards the 
lowest wing-tip. . . . Right. ... Now we’re at 
the top. Throttle down the engine. . . . We’re 
coming over. . . . Put the stick just a little back of 
neutral. . . . Keep straight and level. . . . There 
she comes, pull her quietly, quietly mind! out of the 
dive. . . . Normal. . . . Open up the engine 
again. . . . There’s your first loop! ” 

“But,” said the boy, surprised, “I didn’t feel a bit 
like falling out when we were upside down! On the 
contrary, I felt as if I were jammed into my seat. 
Centrifugal force, I suppose?” 

“Exactly. And that shows that your turn was too 
tight. If the turn is too slow, you’ll have the feeling 
of falling out. The proper loop is when you keep 
your seat without any feeling of being pressed down 


AEROBATICS 193 

or of tumbling out. That means that the various 
forces are evenly balanced. You can see for your¬ 
self that if it puts no strain on you, it won’t on the 
plane.” 

“But I don’t see why I must throttle down at the 
top of the loop.” 

“You don’t need the engine, once the top is reached. 
Gravity will give you all the speed you need. En¬ 
gine, after the top, would give you too much speed 
and enlarge one side of the loop; what’s more, your 
dive would be too fast and recovery slower. Try 
again.” 

But in the middle of it, Orvie side-slipped. But 
he recovered easily enough, for there was plenty of 
altitude. 

“What did I do wrong then?” he queried. 

“Didn’t keep your rudder straight. Even a light 
turn gives the outside wing more pressure and tilts 
you sideways. That’s about all the mistakes you’re 
likely to make, unless you throttle your engine before 
you reach the top. Don’t do that, for it makes a tail- 
slide, and while it’s not difficult to recover from a tail- 
slide, it puts a severe strain on the machine. Some 
flimsy makes won’t stand it. Never throttle till up¬ 
side down.” 

Orvie was surprised to see how quickly he caught 


i 9 4 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

the trick, and, that very same morning, looped several 
times, thus achieving his first test of aerobatics. 

“Spinning” gave him more trouble, not because the 
recovery was any more difficult, but it took him three 
days to get thoroughly accustomed to the giddiness 
of the rotation. That fear once overcome, it was 
easy enough to remember to centralize the rudder 
and push the stick forward to make a straight dive, 
after which levelling out was normal. The “half- 
roll” did not prove difficult, but for some reason or 
other, the “full roll” worried him a good deal, and he 
never got to the finish shown by his Instructor, who 
made four complete full rolls without loss of altitude. 
It takes an expert airman to do it. 

The “Immelman turn”, used mainly in warfare to 
enable the pursued to twist around and above the 
pursuer, was the next feat learned. Then came the 
“falling leaf”, of no value except for training in all 
possible positions, and, lastly, the “cart-wheel”. 

As Orvie was spending most of his time on the me¬ 
chanical and engineering end, this flying instruction 
only came occasionally, but, well before the end of 
the winter, he was ready to try any evolution in the 
air. He could consider himself a finished and ex¬ 
pert pilot for any form of fair-weather flying, but, as 
his Instructor warned him, a full knowledge of the 


AEROBATICS 


i9S 


use of instruments was needed for blind-flying, night- 
flying, and all the risks of bad weather. Only his 
age forbade his taking the higher pilot licenses. The 
following year he counted on passing all the examina¬ 
tions that the Department of Commerce would re¬ 
quire. 


CHAPTER XI 


WHEN FLOODS RAGE 

The following summer found Orvie back again 
with Matt Logan at Lake Noocumpook, and the hunt¬ 
ing season passed without mishap or accident. The 
boy had proved his mettle, and, as many of the 
hunters who had been to the camp the previous year 
returned, all were the boy’s friends. 

He did not return to the Flying School, the winter 
following, having secured both the mechanical li¬ 
censes he sought, but entered a Technical College for 
a special engineering course. This was partly at his 
mother’s request, and partly because Major Lee 
wanted the boy to have as full a training as possible 
before his eighteenth birthday, when he would be per¬ 
mitted to secure full pilot rights and to enter the fly¬ 
ing world professionally. 

But, one April morning, opening his daily news¬ 
paper, Orvie read of high water in the Upper Ohio 
and Upper Missouri, of continual rainfall, and of 
fears that, if the heavy rains continued, there might 

196 


WHEN FLOODS RAGE 


197 

be a repetition of the disastrous Mississippi flood of 
1927, for flood prevention measures had partaken 
more of discussion than of action. 

Could not he do something? Surely the airplane 
could afford some means of rescue! 

On sudden impulse, Orvie darted off for the nearest 
telegraph office, picked up a blank, and wrote: 

PRESIDENT, 

GRAND TRUNK LUMBER CORPORATION, 
TORONTO! 

DOES YOUR OFFER OF “PIPESTONE”AIRPLANE 
STILL HOLD GOOD? CHANCE FOR FLOOD RES¬ 
CUE WORK PROBABLE. 

ORVIE LEE. 

Promptly the answer came back: 

ORVIE LEE, AVIATOR: 

GET BIGGEST PLANE YOU CAN FIND. SEND 
US THE BILL. SUGGEST CURTISS-SIKORSKY 
AMPHIBIAN. 

The boy whistled. This was one of the most ex¬ 
pensive planes on the market, with an eight-passen¬ 
ger cabin. 

He telegraphed back: 

SIKORSKY ENORMOUSLY COSTLY. 


ORVIE LEE. 


198 with the u. s. aviators 

The reply came promptly: 

ONE HUMAN LIFE WORTH MORE THAN 
ANY PLANE. YOU SAVED TWO HUNDRED, AL¬ 
READY. BUY QUICK. GET TO FLOOD WORK. 

Orvie knew that this plane had done some wonder¬ 
ful work, was used by the Western Air Express, and 
was especially powerful in the water. Very solidly 
built, powered with two 410 h.p. Pratt and Whitney 
“Wasp” engines, the Amphibian had been approved 
by U. S. Army and Navy experts and was capable of 
long sustained flight; it was able, moreover, to keep 
aloft on one motor, with full load, should either en¬ 
gine happen to get out of running order. 

After a further exchange of telegrams with his 
father, the boy took the first train to Washington to 
visit the Aeronautics Branch of the Department of 
Commerce, taking with him the letters and telegrams 
he had received, and, besides, a personal letter which 
the head of the Flying School had given him, certify¬ 
ing that he was able to meet all requirements for a 
full Transport Pilot’s license. 

“It’s a little irregular,” said the head of the bureau 
to whom he made application next morning, “because 
even an Industrial Pilot’s license cannot be granted 
to any one under eighteen years of age.” 

“I’m in my eighteenth year, sir.” 


WHEN FLOODS RAGE 


l 99 

The official smiled. 

“The wording of the law is definite! But you say 
that you want to use this airplane for rescue work 
down in the flood districts?” 

“Yes, sir. That was my idea.” 

“Well, you wouldn’t be very likely to ask a 
refugee to pay for being rescued, would you?” 

“What an idea, sir!” 

“So, in a way,” the official went on, “your private 
pilot’s license would allow you to carry any one you 
liked, so long as you didn’t do it Tor hire or reward’ — 
that’s the wording of the section. But, in view of 
the fact that you can show more than two hundred 
hours of solo flying, that you’ve done all the emer¬ 
gency maneuvers, and that your purpose is a philan¬ 
thropic one, I can waive the age qualification to the 
extent of giving you a temporary ‘limited commer¬ 
cial’ pilot’s license. Show me your log-book at the 
end of the month, and I’ll extend it for three months, 
if all goes well. After that, we’ll see.” 

“Then, sir,” asked the boy, “do you think I am 
justified in accepting the Lumber Company’s offer?” 

“It’s because of that offer and because of your 
record in that Pipestone affair that I’m willing to 
stretch a point as to the license. I shouldn’t be 
easy in my mind if I refused any air help to the 


200 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 


flooded districts. Things are not bad there, yet, 
but every day shows them worse, and the Weather 
Reports are not encouraging. The sooner you get 
there, in reason, the better. Perhaps it may help 
you if I call up the Curtiss people on the long¬ 
distance ’phone.” 

“Do you think that’s the best plane for me, sir?” 

The official shrugged his shoulders. 

“It would hardly do for me, in my position, to ex¬ 
press any preference or give any publicity,” he said. 
“The Loening Amphibians have done some start¬ 
lingly good work, the Vought people have a new 
two-purpose plane that stands up well, the Boeing 
Flying Boat has a mighty good name behind it, 
the Fairchild has a combined pontoon and ski plane 
for water, snow, or ice, and pretty much the same en¬ 
dorsement might be given to anything turned out 
by the Martin, Mahoney, Wright, Douglas, or any 
other of the really first-class American aircraft com¬ 
panies. But if any one cares to offer me a Sikorsky 
Amphibian for nothing, I’m not going to say ‘No’!” 

Arriving at the Curtiss factories, Orvie was not 
surprised to find that he was expected. 

“So you’re the youngster the Department of Com¬ 
merce called up about!” said the head of the flying- 
field. “Oh, I’d heard all about you, before. I re- 


WHEN FLOODS RAGE 


201 


member the Pipestone Creek fire; it was all written 
up in the Toronto Globe.” 

“Was it? I never saw it!” 

“Just as good for you, maybe. Might have made 
you too cocky. Well, I hear we’re to turn over to 
you one of our newest model Amphibians, just like 
that! When do you want to go? Right off the bat, 
I suppose? I would have, at your age.” 

“I’d like to go up in one, first, with one of your 
pilots at the controls, if I might.” 

“What for?” 

“To get the feel of her.” 

“I was told that you could fly a barn-door, if it 
had a motor tied on with string.” 

Orvie grinned. 

“So I will — if some one else will take it up the 
first thousand feet! But I’ve never flown anything 
bigger than the tri-motor Bellanca, and I want to be 
sure that I know.” 

“Couldn’t you fly her off to-day?” queried the ex¬ 
pert, anxious to get the boy’s real feelings. 

“I could, sir, I think, but I’m not going to. I’d 
like to have a day in the shops — though I know a 
'Wasp’ pretty well, and another day in flying tests. 
Of course, if the floods get worse quickly, I’d like to 
go at once.” 


202 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

The chief of the flying-field nodded with satisfac¬ 
tion. Evidently the boy knew his business. 

‘Til take you up, myself,” he announced. 

Orvie gave a gasp of amazement as the Amphibian 
was rolled out. A more magnificent aircraft he had 
never seen. 

“She is a beauty, isn’t she!” was the chief’s com¬ 
ment as he saw the boy’s admiration. “And she acts 
as well as she looks. We’ll take off on land and drop 
in the water,” he continued. “This is a new model. 
It was built for a big copper magnate, but he’s in 
Europe, now, and we’ll have a sister craft ready be¬ 
fore he comes back.” 

“But that’s a craft for a millionaire! ” 

“To the last notch.” 

“And she’s going to be mine?” 

“She is yours, right now. At least, to all intents 
and purposes. Of course, you being a minor, Major 
Lee will have to sign. I wired to him last night. 
And I’ve no fear about the Grand Trunk Lumber 
Company’s check. I wired them, too. Hop in! 
I’ll take the controls for the first burst, since you want 
me to.” 

The big Amphibian lumbered along the runway a 
little heavily as compared with the Dan’l Boone , but 
she had powerful shock absorbers and the jolting was 


WHEN FLOODS RAGE 


203 

not great. Her “Wasps” developed enormous power 
and she lifted with a shorter run than the boy had ex¬ 
pected, circling round the field at tremendous speed 
with her engines at half-throttle, and came down on 
the water firmly, but lightly. 

When she came to a standstill, the two changed 
places. The expert gave a few hints to Orvie, and the 
boy took off. 

“She’s steadier than the Bellanca, but not so re¬ 
sponsive,” he said, when he had circled and landed 
again. 

“Naturally,” was the reply. “A passenger-cabin 
plane isn’t made for aerobatics. Of course, you can 
loop the loop with her or do anything else you like, 
but I don’t advise you to. What we’ve been after 
is to eliminate air-sickness, for the sake of passengers. 
Get her into bumpy weather, and you’ll be surprised. 
She won’t bump; at least, to be honest, we declare 
that she bumps less than most. Want to take her up 
again?” 

“I’d like to, if you don’t mind?” 

“Not a bit. Ask anything you’ve a mind to. By 
the way, you know Wasps’, I suppose?” 

“I’ve got both an engine mechanic’s and an air¬ 
plane mechanic’s license,” said the boy. “And I’m 
taking an engineering course, now.” 


204 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

“Then you haven’t anything to ask! ” 

“Oh yes, I have, a lot! ” And Orvie proved it with 
a series of searching questions, which he followed up 
by a day in the factory. When, two days later, he 
was ready to take the Amphibian off — the name 
Pipestone had been duly painted on her — he felt 
thoroughly at home with the craft. 

“Are you going to run her over to Toronto?” he was 
asked. 

“No,” answered Orvie. “That would look like try¬ 
ing to show off. The news from down south is get¬ 
ting worse. I’m going there to see what I can do.” 

Ten minutes later, the big Sikorsky Amphibian was 
in the air and roaring over the country, with Cleve¬ 
land as the first stop. Orvie dropped for a moment 
into the office of Porrit, the hunter who had been at 
Noocumpook Lake the first season. 

“Going down to the floods to see what you can do 
to help, Orvie?” said Porrit, when he heard the news. 
“That’s the stuff! Here!” 

He opened a left-hand drawer and pulled out a 
check-book. 

“Five thousand will help out to buy supplies and 
provisions for the homeless,” he said. “I was going 
to send it to the Red Cross, but I’d just as soon it 
went through you. If you want more, wire me.” 


WHEN FLOODS RAGE 205 

The boy flushed with pleasure. 

“Ell — Ell make you a strict accounting, Mr. Por- 
rit,” he said. 

“Good! It never does any harm to be business¬ 
like,” said the broker. “I know lots of big men in 
business who would give more to charity if they knew 
exactly how the money was spent. That’s what I 
like about air work. There’s no roundabout to it; 
it’s ‘Johnny-on-the-spot’ all the time. Why don’t 
you go and see Merrill, too?” 

“No,” said the boy definitely. “It would look as 
if I were begging. I hadn’t any idea of that when I 
dropped in this morning. I just came to say 
‘Howdy’.” 

“I know. Well, good luck to you, Orvie. Stop at 
the cashier’s as you go out and cash that check; it’ll 
save you a trip to the bank.” 

The boy left with his head in air. A magnificent 
machine, all his own, and five thousand dollars in his 
pocket to spend on relief work! What a chance! 

Once in the air again, Orvie began to consider what 
he had better do. He would have liked to accom¬ 
plish all the work on his own, but judgment told him 
that, if every one did that, there would be no organi¬ 
zation and a good deal of overlap. 

He dropped to the ground at St. Louis, though 


206 with the u. s. aviators 

with a certain amount of fear, for the ground was 
soggy and the Sikorsky had her pontoons but a very 
little distance above the ground. He came down 
with S-turns to have as short a run as possible, and 
though, once, after touching ground, she tipped a 
little, bringing one of the wings perilously near to the 
soil, so beautifully balanced was the plane that in¬ 
trinsic stability was almost instantaneous and she 
landed without damage. 

The boy was welcomed by the pilots there, some of 
whom were but a year or two older than himself, and 
the Pipestone was the centre of much interest, for 
many of the flyers had never seen a Sikorsky except 
at the Aeronautical Show. He gave a “joy-ride” to 
eight of them, enormously proud of his plane, as was 
only natural. 

“Look here, Son,” said “Buck” Diggers, “if you 
don't mind, I'll give you a tip about this flood stuff. 
Run down to Vicksburg. The Red Cross has got a 
headquarters there and I'll give you a letter to the 
local Director. Tell him that you’re down on your 
own, but that you're ready to work under his orders. 
That'll put you in right, from the start, and if you do 
happen to get into a smash-up when you're flying for 
the Red Cross, they'll foot the damage bills. What's 
more, you’ll have access to all the latest information, 


WHEN FLOODS RAGE 207 

and to the flood maps kept up to date by constant 
telegraph and telephone messages.” 

“But won’t they set me to running supplies and 
that sort of thing?” queried the boy, who wanted ex¬ 
citement. 

“Not likely. You see that Sikorsky of yours is a 
passenger plane, and nothing else. There won’t be 
many of them on the river. Smaller planes can hop 
around and shoot supplies. Tell the Red Cross Di¬ 
rector that you’re after personal rescues. But, Son, 
do you suppose you can land on a rushing river?” 

“They told me at the works that I could bring her 
down on fairly rough water.” 

The experienced pilot looked doubtful. 

“Don’t try it to start with,” he said. “When I was 
there in 1927 the current was running at 20 miles an 
hour and better, and even the best of seaplanes isn’t 
a motor-boat. Keep to still water, if you can. I’ll 
show you what I mean. 

“I remember,” he went on, “that flood year, when 
I was flying just west of Lamont, while passing near 
a small shack, I noticed a hole close to the chimney 
and apparently something protruding. A head and 
shoulders appeared. The water was above the eaves. 
A negro of about thirty-five, and stout, scrambled 
out and frantically waved his arms, motioning us to 


208 with the u. s. aviators 


come down. The tragedy began to strike home very 
forcibly. In a small two-seater plane it was im¬ 
possible to do anything for him. The current must 
have been running twenty-five miles an hour. A 
landing would have meant, in all likelihood, a loss 
of the plane, though it was a Vought and a pretty 
sturdy article. We circled around, and I waved my 
arm as a promise that we would tell of his plight. 
But I couldn’t help feeling a bit mean as we flew 
away, though there was nothing to be done. In a 
case like that, though, if I’d had your Pipestone I’d 
have had a shot at it.” 

“That’s exactly where I thought this would come 
in,” ejaculated Orvie. 

“It’ll take handling,” said “Buck” dubiously, “but, 
after all, a life is worth any risk. But that wasn’t 
the only case, by a long shot. Why, only a few miles 
from where I’d seen the chap break a hole in the roof, 
I passed another house where there were a man and 
his wife waving a sheet. The current was running 
slower, there, and with a bigger plane we could easily 
have got them. The likelihood of getting to them by 
boat was remote, at least for a long time. I reported 
to headquarters, at once, and I believe a Coast Guard 
unit got to them — at least I hope so.” 

“But there was a heavy loss of life, wasn’t there?” 


WHEN FLOODS RAGE 


209 

“Very heavy/’ said the old pilot, gravely. “This 
flood isn’t going to be anything like so bad — at least 
we hope so. You take my tip, Son, and work with 
the Red Cross. You’ll meet other pilots, there, and 
they’ll help you out a lot.” 

It was a good long flight to Vicksburg, and when 
Orvie got there he saw a number of seaplanes and 
landplanes, Army and Navy fliers. They clus¬ 
tered about him when the Pipestone taxied to a 
mooring. 

“Lordy!” said one of the old Navy pilots. “Some 
new flying rule? The bigger the plane, the smaller 
the pilot?” 

Orvie felt a little chafed, but he kept his good 
humor. 

4 

“Does a chap have to be over seven feet high to get 
to be an admiral?” he queried. 

The pilot slapped him on the back. 

“That’s the way to talk, Bud. But you’ve got a 
whale of a ship. Who are you flying for?” 

“Myself,” said the boy. “It’s my own plane.” 

They chaffed him unmercifully about it, and 
wanted to know where he kept his millions, but the 
chaffing was all good-humored. The fact that he 
did not mention anything about the way he had got 
the plane told in his favor, for the name Pipestone 


2 io WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 


had given one of the men the clue, and the story 
spread around. 

The next morning he reported to the Red Cross 
Director. 

“I know,” came the prompt reply. “Buck Dig¬ 
gers wired me about you. As for work, you can hop 
off in an hour if you want action. See here. We're 
cooperating with the U. S. Army Third Mississippi 
District. An army observation plane has reported a 
break and spill-over of the Arkansas River between 
Swan Lake and Meto Bayou, about sixty miles air¬ 
line from Rosedale, on the Mississippi. It’s not very 
thickly populated, but back of Langford and Reydel 
there are some scattered settlements. You may find 
something to do, there. It’ll be fairly still water. 
Don’t risk coming down either on the Arkansas or the 
Mississippi, Lee, it’s dangerous, and in the main 
course of the stream, motor launches are the thing. 
Good luck — and remember, don’t be foolhardy. 
Take your time and don’t take any risks.” 

“Well,” said Dawson, one of the Navy men, when 
he came out, “what’s the orders?” 

“I’m to go to Meto Bayou on the Arkansas and see 
what I can find. There’s a ‘spill’ up that way.” 

“So much the better. It’ll reduce the head of 
water. Look here, do you want me to go with you? 


WHEN FLOODS RAGE 


211 


The Commander will give me leave. I know the 
country. My plane’s being overhauled and won’t be 
ready till to-morrow.” 

“I wish you would. Take the controls, if you like.” 

“No. It’s your ’bus.” 

But the Navy flier looked pleased at the offer. 

The Pipestone took off without a hitch and roared 
up the swollen river. In a little under two hours’ 
flying his friend tapped him on the shoulder and said 
earnestly: 

“Bear off to the right a bit! ” 

Orvie turned slowly and circled, flying low. Down 
and down they came, while Dawson scanned the 
waters closely. 

“Looks like some one up a tree, there!” he re¬ 
marked. 

“Where?” Then, a moment later. “So there is!” 

“Good chance for your first rescue, Son. There’s 
hardly any current, here. Let’s try for him.” 

The boy circled, brought the Pipestone into the 
wind and dropped gently to the water, taxiing up 
gently. 

“Can you swim?” shouted the Navy pilot as they 
approached. 

“I sho’ can, Boss!” 

“Come along, then!” 


2 i2 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 


In a couple of minutes the negro had clambered 
aboard. 

“You-all must ha’ heard my prayin’,” he said. 
“I jest have got to thank you-all. Lordy, it’s like a 
house!” he ejaculated, as he looked around the spa¬ 
cious cabin. 

“You know the country around, I suppose?” 

“I was bo’n here, Boss.” 

“Any one else likely to be cut off by the water?” 

“’Mos’everybody!” 

“Who? Think!” 

The negro scratched his head. 

“Napoleon Lamourou an’ his wimmenfolk is likely 
cotched,” he said. “Their place is right on a bayou 
bank.” 

“Which way?” 

“That way, Boss. ’Bout five miles.” 

“We’ll look for them. Give her the gun, Lee.” 

And the Pipestone rushed through the shallow 
water and rose easily. 

“Lordy me! Islflyin’?” 

“Looks like it. What’s your name? ‘Conk’? 
All right. Now, where’s that house you speak of?” 

“Two hours ’way, Boss. Five miles.” 

“That’s three minutes in the air, not two hours. 
Look down.” 


WHEN FLOODS RAGE 


213 

“Makes my head go roun’. That's the place! 
But the house is sho’ gone!" 

They circled a moment. 

“Thar she is! ” cried the negro. “Floatin’! ” 

But Orvie had already seen the floating shack and 
wondered if any one could still be there. 

“Nap’s mother’s bedridden/’ declared their passen¬ 
ger. “She couldn’t ha’ got away.’’ 

“Big woman?’’ queried the lieutenant. 

“No, Boss. All skin an’ bone.’’ 

“Drop and taxi up/’ said Dawson to Orvie. “You, 
Conk, you’ll get out on the wing barefoot, and carry 
her in/’ 

“Me, Boss? Out there?’’ 

“When we’re on the water." 

“Oh, sho’! ’’ 

But there was no need. As the Pipestone dropped 
and slid up to the house, the window opened. 

“Nap!" called the negro. “Here’s a real ‘Fly 
Down, Sweet Chariot’. Come aboard!" 

“Can’t leave the wimmenfolk. An’ Chloe’s broke 
her arm." 

Dawson’s authoritative voice broke in. 

“Get out there, Conk. Barefoot, mind! You, 
Nap, how many of you in the house?" 

“Three, suh. Me, an’ my old mammy, an’ Chloe." 


214 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

“Smash out that window, frame and all. That’s 
the idea. See that there isn’t any broken glass at the 
edges. Got a rope?” 

“Ya’as, suh.” 

“Take a half-turn round that strut. Tie it to 
something in the house. I’ll go out on the other 
wing, to balance. Conk, be ready to take the woman. 
Bring her out, Nap.” 

“Ya’as, suh.” 

He disappeared and returned a moment later with 
a very old woman, whom he placed in Conk’s arms. 
It was a little difficult getting to the cabin, but the 
men managed it. 

“Now, come out on this other wing with me, Conk. 
Can you carry your wife, Nap?” 

“She can walk, suh, tho’ she fainted once with 
pain.” 

“Bring her or carry her. We’ll have her in the 
hospital in no time.” 

“Ya’as, suh.” 

It was a difficult trip for the half-fainting woman, 
but she tottered along the wing in safety and was 
placed in one of the cabin chairs. 

“Take off, Lee!” 

The rope was cut, the Amphibian turned off a trifle, 
splashed ahead through the water, rose and winged 


WHEN FLOODS RAGE 215 

her way back to Vicksburg. They got there just after 
dinner, having made 400 miles and rescued four 
people, one injured and another bedridden. 

This day was a fair sample of many days to follow, 
though, afterwards, the boy flew alone. Thanks to 
the constant information brought by the Red Cross, 
few of his days were without a definite assignment, 
though once or twice he was free to prospect on his 
own account. 

One group of thirty persons, marooned on the top 
of an Indian Mound and who could not be reached 
by boat, since the levee lay between them and the 
river, he brought back to Rosedale in four trips. 
They were already out of provisions, and one of them 
was in need of surgical attendance. 

It meant a good deal of flying, for the Third Missis¬ 
sippi District, alone, contains 20,000 square miles, 
including 250 miles of the Mississippi and several 
thousand miles along the Arkansas, Sunflower, Yazoo, 
Red, Black, and Ouachita Rivers, as well as the Le 
Boeuf Basin. Orvie averaged four hours in the air, 
every day, the rest of his time being spent in over¬ 
haul. Within two weeks the worst of the danger 
was over. 

Proud of his record, and still prouder of the fact 
that his plane had cost him only a couple of hundred 


216 with the u. s. aviators 

dollars for minor repairs, he got his log-book counter¬ 
signed by the Director of the Red Cross and also by 
the U. S. Army District Engineer, and set back across 
country to St. Louis and Cleveland. 

There he rendered his accounts to Porrit, being in¬ 
structed to turn over the remaining money to the 
Red Cross, and started off next day for Toronto, to 
express his thanks, personally, to the President and 
Directors of the Lumber Corporation who had made 
possible this work with the Pipestone . 

He spent the next week flying the officers of the 
corporation and their families, and secured two or¬ 
ders for the company which had manufactured his 
plane. His commission on the orders gave him a 
handsome sum in pocket. Then he flew to Wash¬ 
ington, to show his log-book to the Department of 
Commerce officials, whose kindness in waiving the 
age exemption had made the flood rescue work pos¬ 
sible, and back to his home in triumph. 

He completed his victories by persuading his 
mother to take a fly in the handsomely appointed 
Sikorsky, and brought her to the ground, after the 
first flight, thoroughly converted. 



Commander Byrd in Plane Josephine Ford, 





Courtesy of Aero Digest. 

The Josephine Ford .and the Norge. 
The first aircraft to fly over the North Pole. 










CHAPTER XII 


THE AIR MAIL 

“It's all right to talk about the way that 'Europe 
is ahead of the U. S. in aviation’,” said one of Orvie’s 
fellow-students in the engineering course, "but the 
trouble of it is that it isn’t true! If the European 
countries dropped their subsidies, there wouldn’t be 
more’n three air lines running in Europe to-day. 
All short ones, too.” 

"Are you sure of that?” queried Orvie. 

His classmate snorted. 

"Sure of it? Of course I am. Who was the first to 
fly? — America! Who first flew round the world? — 
America! Who first flew from London to Paris, and 
to Germany? — America! Who first flew across the 
Pacific? — America! Who holds the record for en¬ 
durance flights? — America! Who holds the record 
for altitude? — America! Who has the longest reg¬ 
ular air-mail service in the world? — America! I 
wouldn’t rub it in, of course, if I were talking in Lon¬ 
don or Paris, but it riles me up, sometimes, to hear 


217 


218 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

our chaps saying that Europe has got something on 
us, just because their passenger service is better de¬ 
veloped than ours. I’m an old Air-Mail man, and I 
know!” 

“The Air Mail is sure getting a grip on the coun¬ 
try,” admitted Orvie. 

“Is it! You may not know it, but there are 14,037 
miles of air-mail routes in operation (Official figures, 
Sept. 1, 1928) or there were last summer, when I got 
leave, to come here. And there are more now. And 
the Pan-American Airways will add a couple of thou¬ 
sand more. Put it moderate — there are fifteen thou¬ 
sand miles of air-mail route under our Post-Office 
Department alone. It’d take half a dozen European 
countries, put together, to tot up to that! Why, 
there’s just one contracting firm, alone, the Boeing 
people, who’ve got 1918 miles of route all to them¬ 
selves, just a little jump from Chicago to ’Frisco. 

“I can fly better than I can talk, but when I get 
hold of a pilot who can talk as well as he can fly, why, 
I’m ready to listen. I heard Blaine Stubblefield tell 
of a flight like that, and it was good hearing. That’s 
a U. S. Air-Mail line story. * Here, I’ll get it for 
you. This is the way he puts it: 

* This account deserves a place in air literature. It appeared in 
“U. S. Air Services” and has the real tang of the air in it. F. R-W. 


THE AIR MAIL 219 

“ ‘The distinction of printers’ ink is claimed for 
this essay/ says he, ‘on the ground that nothing is 
said in it about The Perils of the Night Air Mail, 
Hooded Knights of the Aerial Void, Intrepid Bird- 
men, or Winging Their Way.’ ” 

Orvie laughed aloud. 

“ ‘Hooded Knights of the Aerial Void’ is a bird of a 
phrase! ” said he. 

“Isn’t it? But, honest, I’ve seen titles just as wild! 
But Stubblefield — I don’t know if that’s his right 
name — just blazes ahead: 

“ ‘Every one said that Oakland Airport was a good 
one — one of the best in the country. Lindbergh 
came along and said the same. We therefore offer 
no description, but climb into a Boeing mail plane 
with a camera and another passenger. Burr Wins¬ 
low is behind the stick. 

“ ‘We rise into the sunlight at 7 a.m. sharp, and 
turn into a tailwind toward Sacramento. The 
farmers in the valley, having come under the spell of 
radio announcers, have learned to stay in bed until 
daybreak and they now use the tune of our “Wasp” as 
an alarm clock. 

“ ‘No gas is taken at Sacramento, because it is only 
175 miles to Reno, the first division point. After a 
two-minute stop for mail, we crack throttle and are 
off again. A fifteen-minute search reveals a hole in 
the ceiling and we dive up through, as the lady pas- 


220 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 


senger said, into a blue sky. The Sierras stand up 
to the East like mountain islands in a frozen sea cov¬ 
ered with snow. There is nothing quite so white as 
the top side of a cloud strata in the sun. It stretches 
away, a lonely world by itself. 

“ ‘Seventy-five miles of this without a peep at the 
ground, and we are over Emigrant Pass in the Sier¬ 
ras, better known among pilots as “The Hump.” 
There is where the gold crusaders of *49 saw the end 
of the trail to the land of gold. You cannot fly long 
enough to be on familiar terms with this mighty place. 
One sees it in a new mood each time, seemingly de¬ 
fiant of the men who ride easily over its canyons and 
bluffs, quite independent of its blusters and threats. 

“ ‘Vaulting The Hump, one looks down into the 
mouth of Truckee Valley where it joins the desert 
country. In the midst of this brave spot, set in a 
mosaic of green in various shades of crops, is Reno. 
Last Chance in the jump-over for Sacramento in the 
days for gold! Breathing station for giant locomo¬ 
tives and scene of the fatal wreck where Casey Jones 
became an angel, Casey Jones, folk-lore hero of rail 
and throttle in its heyday. He died at Reno Hill, 
eight hours late with the Western Mail. But other 
men have come to beat his time over The Hump. 
Down from the summit we came, at half throttle, and 
rested on the old Government mail field, still only an 
hour and forty-five minutes from San Francisco. 

“ ‘Again we headed out over the parched moun¬ 
tains and deserts, this time with Harry Huking. The 


221 


THE AIR MAIL 

plane was just from the factory, all trimmed up and 
wearing a new “Hornet” on its nose. We got over to 
Elko and as there was an extra plane on the block, the 
pilot, Hugh Barker, suggested we go along together 
and get some pictures of the ship in the air. Hugh 
and Harry agreed to go straight through Secret Pass 
in the Ruby Mountains to get some wild scenery. 

“ ‘One can take his choice of flying directly on the 
course over the pass, or going to the left around the 
end of the range. It is usually quicker to go round, 
because the distance to the Pass is too short to make 
altitude. We started with our nose high. The “Hor¬ 
net” complained in pipe-organ bass, but pulled us up 
the steep slope. 

“ ‘The Rubies are wild and rough as a saw. Secret 
Pass, 10,000 feet aloft, might have remained “secret” 
forever so far as most of us are concerned, if we had to 
struggle up it afoot. In these days of sporting-page 
athletes, folding beds, and canned heat, men with 
enough pedal ambition to crawl up there are few. 
But it's easy for the Air-Mail traveler. He simply 
sits there and looks carelessly at grandeur which only 
eagles and other high-ceiling fowl hitherto have been 
permitted to see. We hit some powerful drafts over 
the backbone of the range but our good engine blew 
them out of countenance, and we slid over into the 
Great Salt Desert — the largest aerodrome in the 
world, as worthless to commerce as the North Pole. 
Taken by and large, this place is somewhat discon¬ 
certing. 


222 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 


“ ‘What remains of this inland sea, which once 
covered the Great Basin country, we presently see to 
the fore and left — Great Salt Lake. Salt Lake City 
appears in the foreground of a rugged scene. The 
Wasatch Peaks, our first glimpse of the Rockies, rise 
abruptly behind the city, seeming to challenge farther 
Eastward progress of the mail. The dome of the 
Mormon Tabernacle catches the eye; then the pin¬ 
nacles of the Temple, where Moroni stands, sounding 
his golden trumpet to the East. 

“ ‘Salt Lake City, with five routes, ranks third 
among the Air-Mail depots of the country. Chicago 
is first, and Cleveland second. Six or seven hangars; 
busy mechanics; pilots taking a last pull at a ciga¬ 
rette; ships fading out to the East, North, South, and 
West; Allen, our next pilot, getting into his suit. 

“ ‘ “We can get through that all right,” he says, in 
reply to some anxious glances at some stormy drap¬ 
ery hanging over the Wasatch. “There’s a good ceil¬ 
ing in the canyon. We’ll go as soon as the Western 
Air gets in.” 

“ ‘Presently a Douglas came over the hangars with 
the mail from Los Angeles. A thousand pounds of 
mail was stacked into the Boeing’s pits, and we took 
off.’ ” 

“A thousand pounds!” exclaimed Orvie. 

“Well, the Air Mail carried over thirty million let¬ 
ters last year, at special rates, and it’ll nearly double 
that next year. But let’s get back to the trip. 


THE AIR MAIL 223 

“ ‘Heading for the Wasatch we seem doomed to 
certain disaster, but, as we approach this rugged 
range, a spacious canyon appears to let us through. 
The Rocky Mountains rise high on the right. They 
are entertaining a lusty blizzard, the edges of which 
hang down in our path. 

“ ‘Flying through rain or sleet is rough business if 
one exposes any cuticle. He might as well submit 
his hands or face to be burnished by a sandblasting 
machine. One puts his head out of the window to 
see an approaching squall — only once! Precipita¬ 
tion seen from an airplane is always horizontal. So 
far as the observer is concerned, it will never fall to 
the ground at all, but will continue to the rear in¬ 
definitely. 

“ The Rockies are spread over a considerable area 
of this country, according to the map. One would 
think he would have to wear out the rudder dodging 
between rugged peaks. But, as a matter of fact, 
there is plenty of room between them and they are 
not nearly so rocky as the Kit Carson stories would 
have us to believe. For the most part, the course 
lies over ground on which we could sit down. 

“ ‘We make a fast landing at Rock Spring, 6500 
feet above sea level, take on fuel, and are off again. 
A couple of hundred miles farther East, over lonely 
plains where the coyote howls and the wind sports 
free, the prairie reminds us of our grandfathers, ox- 
ing along at three miles an hour and scanning the 
horizon for Indians out of control. 


22 4 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

“ ‘We “top out” at Sherman Hill, 30 miles west of 
Cheyenne. Sherman Hill is the ceiling of the Trans¬ 
continental, being about 10,000 feet above sea-level. 
The Sherman Hill beacon — on one of the issues of 
the five cent air-mail stamps — is said to be on the 
highest location in the world. It is not the Conti¬ 
nental Divide, though, which is not the collar-bone 
of a mighty range, but a broad expanse of rolling 
country, studded with numerous small lakes and 
ponds and some straggling range horses. It was a 
cruel disillusionment, for now I can never enjoy any 
more of the Great Divide stories. 

“ ‘It’s a long way from the Golden Gate to Chey¬ 
enne, and one is inclined, upon landing there, to 
check back over the brief hours of daylight since we 
left the Pacific Ocean to see if there isn’t something 
wrong, somewhere. 

“ ‘Reaching North Platte, we begin to feel that we 
are back East. Likewise, the aeronautical Marco 
Polo of the same day, arriving at the same point, 
doubtless inhaled a lung-full of sage-brush perfume 
and felt that he was getting out West. Passing on, 
an infinity of green fields and summer fallow below 
impresses the traveller with the real reason for the 
Congressman’s frequent references to the American 
Farmer. It is necessary, however, to imagine all 
this, for darkness overtook the air mail just out of 
Cheyenne. 

“ ‘ “Aloft in the Dark” would be a sizeable subject 
for even the best of adventure-story mechanics. The 


THE AIR MAIL 225 

experience offers unlimited inspiration for the usual 
hooey about such things, but there must be very few 
writers who could capture the reality at hand with 
accuracy. It has been done by a few of them. The 
beacons revolve their long beams aslant the sky, 
flashing an instant in the cabin. The blinkers wink 
their friendly message that we are on the course. 

“ ‘To one flying an airway at night, the world is 
only a chain of lights in a void of darkness — and the 
ship. The “Hornet” bellows his deep song, steady as 
a waterfall. The staunch Boeing structure assumes 
a new significance. 

“ ‘At Omaha; it is midnight. Lights play on men 
transferring a truckload of mail to another ship. 
Slim Lewis, our pilot from Cheyenne, walks away, 
saying that he is going to bed. Slim is next to senior 
pilot in the Air-Mail service. If he had paid postage 
on himself for all the air-mail riding he’s done, the 
bill would look like a war indemnity. 

“ ‘Steve Kaufman has the next relay to Chicago. 

“ ‘ “We’ve got a tail wind,” he says, glancing at 
the sock with a pleased eye. “Let’s be going!” 

“ The BBT floods the field, and we’re up again. 

" Walt Whitman could have approached Chicago 
by air at dawn in good prose. He caught the spirit 
of ships and locomotives and cast it in iron letters. 
But Walt Whitman left us too soon. He should have 
come in, by air, on the Eastbound. 

“ ‘Breakfast in a downtown hotel. Breakfast 22 
hours ago in San Francisco. To men of carbonized 


226 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 


minds it is inconceivable. Only the new crop can 
comprehend it.’ ” 

“And that,” said Orvie’s classmate, “is flying as 
seen by a flyer.” 

“It’s red-hot stuff,” agreed Orvie, “and no one’s 
going to doubt that the Air Mail gets over. But 
how about passenger service?” 

“Just the same thing! People don’t mind travel¬ 
ling in a train by night, why should they in a plane?” 

“Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and bed,” retorted the 
boy. “Four good reasons. There’s no restaurant 
car and Pullman on an airplane, not even on mine. 
And a man who’s willing to spend a couple of thou¬ 
sand on travelling isn’t hankering after a ham sand¬ 
wich and some Thermos coffee, for his ‘eats’, and 
sleeping in a chair.” 

“Stop over for the night, then!” 

“You don’t gain anything on the train, if you do. 
The Limited goes on running all night. If there 
were a cracker jack hotel at every Airport, it might 
help. But at most of them you can’t even get ham- 
and-eggs, much less a good meal. To do the thing 
right, from New York to ’Frisco would take three 
jumps, at best, long ones. And you’d have to stop 
over the night, say, at Chicago and Denver. You 
wouldn’t beat the Limited by much. It’s all right 


THE AIR MAIL 


227 

to be optimistic, but I think some air-stuff writers are 
apt to do a little tall talking about putting the rail¬ 
roads out of business, and all that rot. To my way 
of thinking, the airplane will no more put the rail¬ 
road out of business than the telegraph has put the 
postal service out of business. But there are cross¬ 
country hops where railroad construction is difficult 
and where air passenger lines will become part of the 
regular service. Take the Alleghanies. Traffic from 
Virginia into West Virginia isn’t exactly what you 
would call speedy, and a plane can hop in an hour 
the mountains that it takes a train a whole day to 
climb. From North Carolina to Tennessee, too. 
But these are special cases.” 

“And what do you think of freight transport?” 
queried his classmate. 

“A much more difficult problem,” said Orvie. “I 
went into that very fully with the President of the 
Lumber Company who gave me the Pipestone. I 
couldn’t advise him to go into it,” 

“Why not?” 

“That’s a long and complicated question. I’ll go 
into it some evening, with you, if you’re interested. 
I dug up all sorts of statistics which I can’t remember 
now. But I’ll give you one or two of the main dif¬ 
ficulties. 


228 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

“First of all, a fleet of aircraft represents capital, 
and unless every plane is working all the time, it 
means that capital is lying idle. To work every 
plane every day either means long hauls, or a lot of 
freight traffic over short hauls. Owing to the need 
for constant overhaul, to use a plane every day means 
a ground crew working over it every night, and night 
labor comes high. The paying load per unit of 
horse-power which an aircraft can carry is so much 
higher than the cost of transportation by road and 
rail that the difference in speed doesn’t compensate. 
No big increase can be expected till charges are re¬ 
duced, and charges can’t be reduced until there’s a 
big enough traffic to keep fleets of planes going and 
thus reduce overhead, for maintenance is an enor¬ 
mous item. Both rapid depreciation and obsoles¬ 
cence of airplanes add to cost. Commercial airplanes 
need commercial landing-fields, and ground rent is 
prohibitive. Then — ” 

“ ’Sakes, Orvie, that’s enough! To hear you talk, 
the airplane might just as well never have been in¬ 
vented.” 

“Nonsense! It doesn’t do a problem any harm to 
state it, does it? We’re only at the beginning of avi¬ 
ation, and, remember, Harry, that the Governments 
of all countries stand ready to subsidize air devel- 


THE AIR MAIL 


229 

opment, while cities are spending millions on air¬ 
ports, night-lighting of airways, and such things.” 

“A big part of aircraft operation is subsidized, isn’t 
it?” said his friend, reflectively. 

“It has to be. Private capital couldn’t begin to do 
all that has to be done.” 

“And every airplane and airship can be used in 
war, of course.” 

“That’s one thing,” agreed Orvie, “but I don’t 
think that war preparation is the main idea of the 
U. S. Government. European countries think of na¬ 
tional defence, first, of course, and I don’t blame 
them for it. I won’t name any names, but it’s an 
open secret that four countries, at least, are just pin¬ 
ing for a chance to get into another war. 

“The U. S. has a different angle. We taught the 
world to fly, we’ve got the soundest Air-Mail system 
in the world, and, though geographic conditions make 
it natural for Europe to get more passengers on sub¬ 
sidized air-lines, we’re likely to be the first to solve 
the problem of air freight. The United States Gov¬ 
ernment has faith in the future of aviation, it’s got 
the money to spend, and it knows that every dollar 
given to the aircraft industry is building for the 
future.” 


CHAPTER XIII 


POLAR ICE 

“I should like to be the first man to fly over the 
South Pole!” 

Thus spoke a big-muscled Westerner to Orvie, as 
he sat in a hotel room at Washington, after the com¬ 
pletion of all the tests necessary for his Transport 
Pilot’s License. 

“So should I, Mr. Gallohan,” said the boy, looking 
at his visitor’s card, and wondering what was coming. 

“You’ve got the plane, and I’ve got the money;” 
the phrase burst out like a pistol-shot, “how about 
it?” 

“You mean you want to finance an Antarctic Ex¬ 
pedition?” 

“That’s the idea.” 

“And who is to command it, to lead it?” 

“We two. You and I.” 

Orvie leaned back and smiled. It did not seem 
possible that his visitor could be in earnest. 

“If you have money to spend for scientific pur- 

230 


POLAR ICE 


231 

poses, Mr. Gallohan,” he said, “especially if it’s for 
work either at the North or the South Pole, I think 
I can tell you exactly what to do.” 

“And what’s that?” 

“Send the money to Commander Byrd or to Cap¬ 
tain George H. Wilkins.” 

“But I want to go, myself!” 

“Nothing to stop you. Finance an expedition, 
pick out a leader with long experience in the Arctic, 
see to it that every member of the expedition — ex¬ 
cept yourself — knows Polar sea and land ice, estab¬ 
lish good bases this year and prepare to fly next year, 
and, if you’re footing all the bills, the leader of the 
expedition will take you — if he thinks you can stand 
the trip.” 

“You won’t take the Pipestone yourself? You’ve 
got cold feet?” 

“Mr. Gallohan,” said the boy seriously, “if you can 
afford to spend half a million dollars to finance a polar 
expedition, you can afford five dollars on books. Get 
Byrd’s ‘Skyward*, Amundsen and Ellsworth’s ‘First 
Crossing of the Polar Sea’ and Wilkins’ ‘Flying the 
Arctic’. Read of their years of painful experience, 
of their long training, of the appalling precision of 
preparatory detail which such work requires, and of 
their numerous failures before achieving a final vie- 


232 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

tory, and you’ll begin to understand what Polar work 
means. I haven’t got cold feet, and I’d go on an ex¬ 
pedition in a minute, but I’d figure on ten years’ train¬ 
ing under a competent leader before I’d even think of 
doing anything on my own.” 

The Western range-owner stared. 

“Take Byrd,” said the boy, warming up. “Why, 
back in the World War, he was the first to plan a 
trans-Atlantic flight, he established and directed the 
first seaplane station at Newfoundland, he was as¬ 
signed to the big British airship to be flown to Amer¬ 
ica and only escaped death in that disaster by missing 
the train which he was to take to the fatal trial test, 
he had the Navy back of him, he was associated with 
Donald B. MacMillan, an Arctic explorer, he had the 
help of Capt. Bartlett who went to the last lap but 
one of the North Pole with Peary, he spent a summer 
at North Greenland with the Eskimo, he got a thor¬ 
ough training of Polar conditions by flying over 
Ellesmere Island — one of the worst ice regions of the 
world — his plane sank at the edge of the ice fringe; 
another time the crew had to battle for hours with an 
iceberg, all hands nearly lost their lives over Grin- 
nell Land, and four forced landings on ice which was 
perilous in the extreme were just a few of the troubles 
of his Greenland expedition of 1925. And that was 
only for a starter! 


POLAR ICE 


233 

"Just for one thing, Mr. Gallohan, read how, at 
the very beginning of the polar flight, their plane, the 
Josephine Ford, had to be taken through moving ice 
on a raft. They had to change and make new skis 
for the plane. Fires had to be built on the ice to 
thaw the oil before it could be put in the engines. In 
the trial take-offs there were three upsets, and these 
three crashes would have been absolute disaster to 
any one not trained to the last notch in polar work. 

“And for the last great flight, the risk of the take¬ 
off was tremendous. The runway in front of the 
skis was carefully iced, and the Josephine Ford, with 
her load of 10,000 pounds, had to lift or smash on the 
jagged ice at the end of the runway. But the big 
three-motor Fokker monoplane made it by a narrow 
margin, and the work of navigation began. 

“Have you ever stopped to think, Mr. Gallohan, 
what navigation with special instruments must be 
over a sheer field of ice? Byrd froze his face and one 
hand in taking sights with the instruments from the 
trap-doors. Byrd is a very highly trained naviga¬ 
tor, who has made air navigation his hobby for seve¬ 
ral years — and that was a large cause of his success. 

“And you think, sir, that one can just hop in a 
plane and fly off like that! 

“Just read the details of Byrd’s navigating! He 


234 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

passed near where Nansen had struggled so heroi¬ 
cally over weary mile after weary mile, he crossed 
Peary’s oft-travelled trail before the last splendid 
victory came to the greatest of all Polar discoverers, 
and then — came a leak in the oil tank. 

“But at three minutes past nine in the morning, 
May 9, 1926, Byrd reached the Pole. Sights and 
calculations followed with absolute accuracy and 
trained speed. Why, just the mathematics alone 
would be beyond most college professors! Then, to 
make sure that the Pole had actually been reached, 
Byrd went on and made a second and larger circle 
round the Pole. But navigation up there was a 
puzzling problem. That never occurred to you, 
did it? 

“ Time and direction became topsy-turvy at the 
Pole’, Byrd wrote. When crossing it on the same 
straight line we were going north one instant and 
south the next. No matter how the wind strikes 
you at the North Pole it must be travelling north, 
and however you turn your head you must be look¬ 
ing south. Our job was to get back to the small 
island of Spitzbergen which lay south of us — and 
south was all round! 

“ Were we exactly where we thought we were? If 
not — and we could not be absolutely certain after 
that circling — we would miss Spitzbergen. And 


POLAR ICE 


235 

even if we were on a straight course, would that en¬ 
gine stop? It seemed certain that it would. 

“ ‘As we flew there at the top of the world, we salut¬ 
ed the gallant, indomitable spirit of Peary and veri¬ 
fied his report in every detail. 

“ ‘Below us was a great eternally frozen, snow- 
covered ocean, broken into ice fields or cakes of vari¬ 
ous shapes and sizes, the boundaries of which were 
the ridges formed by the great pressure of one cake 
upon the other. This showed a constant ice move¬ 
ment and indicated the non-proximity of land. Here 
and there, there was a separation, leaving a water- 
lead which had been recently frozen over and show¬ 
ing green and greenish-blue against the white snow.’ 

“A quarter of an hour later, the Josephine Ford set 
back for Spitzbergen. The elements were favorable. 
And to Byrd’s great astonishment, the engine went 
on running. And — what is to me the most amazing 
marvel of all, Mr. Gallohan — Byrd had managed to 
navigate with such unerring accuracy that he made 
an absolutely straight line for the point that he had 
left, and came flying at good altitude and high speed 
for King’s Bay. He had attained in a flight of fifteen 
hours and thirty minutes what Peary achieved, 
seventeen years before, after weary months of travel 
and nearly twenty years of effort. So much for 
Arctic navigation, sir. And you think I’d be fool 


236 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

enough to suppose that I could do a feat like that!” 

“I didn’t know it was such a job,” said the West¬ 
erner, a little more humbly. 

‘ ‘Amundsen, Ellsworth, Riiser-Larsen, and Nobile, 
the builder of the airship, Norge , were all at King’s 
Bay when Byrd set out and came back. It was the 
very next day that the Norge started out on her flight, 
also to cross the North Pole and to be the first air¬ 
craft to fly across the Polar Sea from Asia to America. 
But if you want to realize what that meant, Mr. Gal- 
lohan, read of the preparations for that voyage. The 
credit lies almost entirely with Amundsen and Riis- 
Larsen. Nobile’s actual handling of the craft left 
nothing to be desired. And they, too, had been van¬ 
quished at 87°43', the year before. 

“But, this time, the Norge was leaving nothing to 
chance, or more accurately, every preparation that 
Roald Amundsen’s long Arctic experience could sug¬ 
gest had been taken. If the Josephine Ford had had 
the benefit of the counsel of Capt. Bartlett, the right- 
hand man of Peary, discoverer of the North Pole, the 
Norge was under Roald Amundsen, discoverer of the 
South Pole. That doesn’t look much like haphazard 
leadership, does it, sir? 

“The Norge took the air from King’s Bay just be¬ 
fore ten o’clock on the morning of May 10, 1926, just 


POLAR ICE 237 

a few hours after Byrd returned. Indeed, Byrd did 
a very sportsmanlike thing. Although worn out 
from the Polar trip, he took up the big three-motor 
Fokker and circled around the airship to bid her ‘bon 
voyage \ 

“An airship is not as speedy as an aeroplane. 
When the Norge had been in the air ten hours, fog 
came. Two hours later the fog became dense, but 
fortunately, shortly before reaching the Pole, it 
cleared. At 1.15 a.m. of the 12th, Riis-Larsen went 
down on his knees and measured steadily through one 
of the port-holes from which the coverings had been 
removed. When the reflection of the sun and the 
bubble for the artificial horizon lay side by side, 
sharply touched by the marking threads, Riis-Larsen 
announced ‘Now we are there’! It was 1.25 a.m. 
Beneath them lay the polar basin, bathed in sunshine. 
Speed was slackened and the Norge went down to 600 
feet altitude. 

“Out flew the Norwegian flag. It was on a cross¬ 
bar fastened to a long aluminum staff exactly like a 
standard. It landed correctly, fixed itself in the ice 
and the light breeze fluttered the Norwegian colors. 
Amundsen turned round and grasped Wisting’s hand. 
No word was uttered. It was unnecessary, for these 
two men’s hands planted the Norwegian flag at the 


238 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

South Pole on the 14th of December, 1911. No other 
men have even been at both Poles. 

“Then the Stars and Stripes flew out. It was with 
an extraordinary, an indescribable feeling, that Ells¬ 
worth undertook the task. When again will a man 
plant the flag of his country at the Pole on his own 
birthday? Lastly, Nobile threw down the Italian 
flag. Thus all three flags stand a few yards apart as 
near the Geographical North Pole as any human be¬ 
ings can determine with instruments. 

“But the purpose of the voyage of the Norge was 
not only to reach the Pole. The main intention was 
to fly from continent to continent across the Polar 
Sea. With very little drift, the airship continued 
over broken-up ice with not a particle of open water 
to be seen, and at 8.30 a.m. met thick fog which lasted 
all day. Occasional breaks in the fog always showed 
sea ice below. At 6.45 a.m. on the 13th, the Norge 
sighted land. It was a great moment. The flight 
had been accomplished and the goal reached. The 
Norge reached the coast of Alaska, some miles west of 
Point Barrow. Over the Bering Straits the Norge 
was tossed and buffeted about and at last took land 
near Teller. The flight from continent to continent 
was achieved.” 

“But didn’t Nobile go up to the Pole again, re- 


POLAR ICE 


^39 

cently?” queried Gallohan. “Seems to me I heard 
something about it.” 

“There's no need to talk about that disastrous and 
fatal-ending trip,” said Orvie, shortly. “To my way 
of thinking, it will be remembered in the history of 
aviation only as having been the cause of the heroic 
but useless deaths of Amundsen and Guilbault, who 
volunteered on an airplane rescue. Amundsen 
found his grave in the Polar Ice, but he has both the 
North Pole and the South Pole for the world’s eter¬ 
nal memory. 

“But whatever may be said about that airship at¬ 
tempt, the pluck of another American air-explorer, 
Capt. George H. Wilkins, is beyond all praise! It 
was Roald Amundsen, himself, who spoke of Captain 
Wilkins’ flight in the Arctic as ‘the most splendid 
achievement in flying that has yet been done.’ ” 

“I haven’t heard much about it,” said the West¬ 
erner. 

“No,” Orvie agreed, “for some reason or other it 
never caught publicity the way that flights to the 
Pole have done. But Wilkins had far more Arctic 
flying, encountered more difficulty, and fought out 
harder conditions than any of the airmen before him. 
In his own words: ‘We begged for money, bought 
machines, flew them and smashed them, rebuilt them 


2 4 o WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

and smashed ourselves. But we have done the work 
in the Arctic that we meant to do’. 

“Just take a look at Wilkins’ adventures — all with 
the aid of men thoroughly competent and experi¬ 
enced— and I think you’ll feel a little differently, 
Mr. Gallohan, about the magnificent courage and 
skill that Arctic work requires. Right at the start of 
the first trip, Hutchinson, a newspaper correspon¬ 
dent, who had volunteered to turn the propellers over, 
slipped under them and was killed. That was be¬ 
fore the Detroiter had even taken the air. 

“A week later, the runway having been prepared, 
Wilkins decided to test out their single-motored 
plane, the Alaskan. Both were Fokkers, the single- 
engined plane having a Liberty engine, the tri-motor 
plane being equipped with ‘Whirlwinds.’ The Alas¬ 
kan took off, with Eielson, a splendid pilot, at the 
control. All went well, but just before landing, the 
plane stalled and, when she levelled and the pilot 
opened the throttle to regain speed, the engine did 
not pick up; so she crashed. It was only the fact 
that the snow was soft that prevented the death of 
both men. 

“Three days later Wilkins went up with the De¬ 
troiter. She also handled well, although the pilot 
was not used to her, but, as though a veritable demon 


POLAR ICE 


241 

were there to suggest error, Lanphier, the pilot, made 
the same mistake as Eielson, stalled and crashed. 
It was a wreck, and weeks would be necessary to 
repair it. 

“They set to work to repair the machines, though 
weather conditions became bad for flying. After 
three weeks the Alaskan was ready again. They 
started again on March 31, 1926, with Eielson at the 
controls. Though not as good as before, the single- 
engined Fokker climbed well, but the fliers soon 
found themselves in a dim grey mist which hid every¬ 
thing, though the sun’s rays pierced through it 
feebly. 

“After flying well out on the Arctic Sea pack-ice 
they chogged back, and, trying to find Point Barrow 
village, dropped from 4000 feet to 2000 feet. There 
was a howling blizzard on land! They climbed 
again to 4000 feet, lost, absolutely lost. Figuring 
and dead reckoning were their only hope. The 
strain on their nerves was such that the men saw 
Eskimo villages everywhere! The Aperiodic com¬ 
pass saved them. They struck a faint line which 
Wilkins recognized — or thought he did — as part 
of the Arctic shore; more by that sure sense of direc¬ 
tion which is the explorer’s particular gift than any¬ 
thing else, they came to Barrow, only to be forced 


242 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

to try for the first time the hazardous experiment of 
landing on snow with ordinary wheel landing gear. 
Eielson managed it perfectly. To make a long story 
short, five days later they flew to Circle City, landed 
there safely, and, next day, flew back to Fairbanks, 
having carried out on their vamped-up machine the 
longest non-stop flight made in the Arctic.” 

“I like that,” said Gallohan. “It takes grit to 
start out after two failures on a self-repaired ma¬ 
chine!” 

“But their hope was in the Detroiter ”, Orvie went 
on. “To get plenty of gasoline to Point Barrow the 
Alaskan had to do the work, and, the very next day, 
they took her over the Endicott Mountains with a 
load of gas. But, climbing into the machine, as she 
started, Wilkins’ mitten got caught in the wheel and 
his wrist snapped. On the way back the wind drifted 
them out of their course, they could not find their way, 
and, once again, Wilkins’ profound study of the whole 
country enabled him to give directions homewards. 
They reached Fairbanks with less than a gallon of 
gas in the tanks. A near thing, Mr. Gallohan! 

“Just the same, despite his broken wrist, Wilkins 
and Eielson set off next day, crowding the Alaskan 
with an overload. She wouldn’t rise over the moun¬ 
tains. There was no going back. Eielson drove the 


POLAR ICE 243 

plane towards a narrow pass — no one knew about 
it and it wasn’t marked on any map. Fog filled the 
valleys, and high clouds covered the range. 

“ ‘There was no hope of passing over the clouds 
with our heavily loaded machine,’ wrote Wilkins, 
‘and to find a safe air-way between the mountain 
peaks was not simple. . . . There were many cases 
of gasoline on the floor, and to give the machine every 
advantage for climbing, I placed all these cases up 
near the pilot’s cockpit. As I was doing this, we 
came to a very bumpy area, the plane was tossed and 
turned so that I lost my balance and fell against the 
cabin wall, again fracturing my arm which had just 
begun to grow together. 

“ ‘Just then I noticed, on the left side of us, a sharp 
mountain peak. It seemed as if we must smash into 
it. I hurriedly motioned to Eielson to keep to the 
right, but he indicated that there was a peak on his 
side also. There was not time to turn. The only 
thing we could do was to risk passing between those 
walls of rock. 

“ ‘Even if we had sufficient height it would have 
taken a cool-nerved pilot to fly the machine through 
that narrow gateway. Eielson kept steadily on. 
Climbing the machine as much as possible, we passed 
through the gap with only a foot or so to spare be¬ 
tween the wings of the machine and the walls of 
rock. As we went through this gap, I looked down 
and saw that the wheels were spinning. The wheels 


244 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

had dragged through the snow ridge as we squeezed 
between those peaks.* ” 

“Great Rattlers!” ejaculated Gallohan. “That 
was a hair-raiser!” 

“The next thing was that, just before starting back, 
an Eskimo who had been set to heat the engine put 
too much seal blubber in the stove and set fire to 
their plane.” 

“Tough luck!” 

“It didn’t seem much damaged, but it was enough. 
On their way back they were caught in a queer cloud 
formation with pillar-like blasts which tossed the 
machine dike a sheet of paper in a windstorm*. Use¬ 
less to go on. Only by clever flying did they manage 
to get back again to Point Barrow. 

“But the Eskimo’s seal blubber fire had done its 
work. Starting off again, next day, the propeller 
began to come to pieces. Wilkins sent a wireless 
to Lanphier, at Fairbanks, bidding him hurry the 
Detroiter . Lanphier wired that he had tested the 
machine and that she wouldn’t run. Mad as a 
hatter, Wilkins fixed up the disintegrating propeller 
. of the Alaskan with brass wire, and flew it to Fair¬ 
banks, anyhow.” 

“Great stuff!” Gallohan was getting excited, 


now. 


POLAR ICE 


2 45 

"Then he started to tinker up the Detroiter. She 
wouldn’t go. The propeller was all out of balance, 
and the engine raced like a mad thing. 

“A new propeller had come for the Alaskan. They 
stuck it on, but for some reason or other it gave no 
power and the machine refused to budge. Back they 
put the propeller which the Eskimo had spoiled and 
Wilkins had tinkered up. 

“Off again with the Alaskan. A wild taxi, and, 
just as she was about to rise, a bump and a crash. 
The right wing had given way. As the machine 
crashed, the loose cases of gasoline fell on Wilkins 
as he was hurled into the snow and the gas from the 
machine poured on the hot exhaust pipe and all 
over Wilkins himself. A spark meant explosion and 
instant death. They dragged him away, dug out 
Eielson — neither injured — and found the Alaskan 
wrecked beyond repair. 

“Spring and continuous fog were coming. But 
Wilkins was hard-set and he took the Detroiter up 
— it was extraordinary how the men got her to go — 
and though she ploughed through fog all the way, 
and nose-dived once to win ten feet of the tundra, 
she reached Point Barrow in safety. And, while 
waiting there for a single clear day, they saw a dark 
object in the skies. It was the Norge crossing from 


246 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

continent to continent over the Polar Sea! But the 
fogs had come. The season was at an end. If not 
a complete failure, the expedition was very near to it. 

“It would be a long story, Mr. Gallohan, to tell of 
all Capt. Wilkins , trouble to get funds for another 
try. But he managed it. I’ll jump to the next 
effort, this time in a Stinson biplane. Just a mere 
description of the scientific equipment of that plane, 
Mr. Gallohan, would make you open your eyes! 

“They left Point Barrow with a ground tempera¬ 
ture of 42 degrees below zero. Four hours out, the 
engine began to sputter; half an hour later, she 
missed badly. It meant landing on the ice in the 
dark. Eielson brought her down and hurried to ex¬ 
amine the engine while Wilkins took sea soundings 
and secured valuable scientific data. 

“It took them two hours fiddling with the engine 
— at 30 below, here — before she picked up again. 
Off into the air once more! Ten minutes later — 
engine trouble; nothing but Wilkins’ long experience 
of Arctic travel afoot enabled them to find a landing 
place. They labored at fixing the engine, Eielson 
with four of his finger-tips solidly frozen. Later, a 
finger had to be amputated. It’s no fun to be a 
mechanic on the Polar ice! 

“Up again, with the engine running again, and 


POLAR ICE 


247 

then thick fog. After fourteen hours out, the Stin¬ 
son No. 1 was above one of the most dangerous dis¬ 
tricts of Arctic ice. Visibility, nil. Wilkins says 
himself: 

“ 'At 9:02 the engine cut out suddenly, as if the 
switch had been snapped. No splutter or gasp be¬ 
cause of a starved carburetor, but sudden silence. 
We could feel the sag of the falling plane. Near the 
ground the air was bumpy. The plane swerved and 
pitched, but Eielson — still calm and cool—cor¬ 
rected with controls each unsteady move. As we 
came within a few hundred feet we could see ice 
ridges. In a moment we were in a snowdrift. The 
left wing and the skis struck simultaneously. We 
bounced and alighted as smoothly as on the best pre¬ 
pared landing-field. . . The fabric of the lower 
wing was torn. The machine still rested on the skis, 
but they had turned on their sides, the stanchions 
twisted and broken. A wireless message was sent — 
and the two exhausted men slept.’ ” 

"What then? Where were they?” cried Gallohan. 

Orvie stopped and looked at him. 

"Fifteen days,” he said, "fifteen long weary days 
they struggled through snow, ice, and water, walking 
and dragging improvised sleds. The story is too 
long to tell. But it’s an heroic thing to read! I’m 
telling you of flying, only. 


248 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

“Did Wilkins give up then? Not a bit. He took 
the other biplane up, but the engine just went to 
pieces almost immediately. An Eskimo was sent 
for repairs, and the plucky explorer managed to fly 
the plane back to Fairbanks. There was trouble 
with the new pilot, for Eielson could not act. The 
other plane could not be made to work well. A sec¬ 
ond season came to its end as the fogs began. 

“The third year! This time Wilkins took a Lock- 
head-Vega with a ‘Whirlwind’ engine, a plane to 
which — as he confessed himself — he had lost his 
heart. She flew the Arctic country from Fairbanks 
to Barrow as easily as around a landing-field in the 
southern States. But there was a long wait at Bar- 
row, and two false take-offs nearly brought ruin. 
The final take-off — after weeks of preparing a run¬ 
way— was a perfect one, and the Lockhead-Vega 
purred above the ice in unbroken smoothness. To 
Wilkins, a man who knows Arctic ice in all its de¬ 
tails, the country below was an open book. 

“Hour after hour passed, Eielson at the controls, 
Wilkins navigating and making unceasing observa¬ 
tions. Close examination was made for land, but no 
land was seen. Thirteen hours in the air, and they 
found themselves between two storms between Grant 
Land and Greenland, a dangerous district. There 


POLAR ICE 249 

was a tolerable ice-landing in sight. Should they 
go down, or go on? Eielson was willing to go on. 
They went on. 

“The two storms seemed to meet in front of them. 
Eielson climbed the machine to 8000 feet, but the 
clouds were still high above them. Flying at an alti¬ 
tude meant loss of fuel. They nosed down and com¬ 
menced weaving in and out of the cloud masses. Gas 
was getting low. The engine had functioned per¬ 
fectly, but it had been a hard driving trip. 

“A sight of land, and then the storm took them and 
flung the plane about savagely. Needle-point peaks 
appeared, but Eielson handled the plane superbly, 
though every minute seemed the last. They circled 
around a small mountainous island and, at last, saw a 
white patch which suggested a landing-place. The 
blizzard raged savagely. As they came down, every¬ 
thing was lost to sight in snow. Eielson brought her 
down on an even keel, absolutely undamaged, and in 
as perfect condition as when she left. A taxi of thirty 
yards into a loose snowdrift, and everything was safe. 
It takes a real pilot to do that!” 

“And where were they? On land or sea?” 

“They didn’t know. But if Wilkins’ calculations 
were exact, they must have been on the west coast of 
Spitzbergen, perhaps not more than a hundred miles 


250 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

from King’s Bay. There were twenty gallons of gas 
left. Even so, the great feat had been accomplished. 
An airplane had flown across the Polar Sea. 

“They were on Dead Man’s Island. Five days 
they had to stay there. At last the weather per¬ 
mitted them to start, but, to break free, Wilkins had 
to push on the tail. Twice he tried to climb in as 
the machine rose, twice he was thrown off and the 
plane rose without him. Twice Eielson had to land 
again. The third time, as he rose, Wilkins got his 
fingers on the rim of the cockpit and tumbled in, safe 
but covered with bruises. Ten minutes later the 
radio towers of Green Harbor came into view. They 
landed safely at their foot. After three years of 
savage trial — victory! Two men, alone, had cov¬ 
ered 2200 miles of Arctic snow and ice, 1300 miles 
of which had never before been seen by man. 

“And now, Mr. Gallohan,” said Orvie, “do you still 
think that it’s because of ‘cold feet’ that I said I 
couldn’t take you on a Polar expedition?” 

The Westerner rose and held out his hand. 

“It just goes to show,” he said, “how many differ¬ 
ent kinds of a fool a man can be when he begins to 
talk of something he knows nothing about. But I 
can take my medicine! I’ll tell you what I’ll do — 


POLAR ICE 


251 

I’ll send a check to Wilkins and to Byrd for their 
next expeditions.” 

“And,” added Orvie, “to Norway for the Amund¬ 
sen Fund.” 

“I’ll do it, and I’ll do it to-day,” said Gallohan, 
“and if ever you do go on an Arctic trip, boy, remem¬ 
ber that your personal equipment and anything that 
you may need comes from me!” 


CHAPTER XIV 


PAN-AMERICA 

“Switch Off ?” 

“Switch off!” replied Orvie. 

“Gas on?” queried the ground mechanic. 

“Gas on!” 

The mechanic swung the propeller sharply through 
three or four turns to suck gas into the cylinders, 
placed the blade at an angle marked to show when 
one piston was in firing position, shouted, — “All 
clear?” and stepped back. 

“All clear!” 

Orvie snapped on the switch. 

The engine coughed and broke into a steady purr; 
a moment later, the Pipestone ran across the New 
Orleans landing-field and rose swiftly and smoothly 
in the air. Major Lee was in the observer’s seat. 

This was to be the determining flight of the boy’s 
abilities. Some months had passed since Gallohan’s 
offer to finance an Arctic expedition, and Orvie had 
spent this time partly in flying guests to the hotels 

252 


PAN-AMERICA 253 

on the Thousand Islands, and partly in a close study 
of air navigation, or “aviation.” 

In this he had found an enthusiast in his father. 
Major Lee, though an ace in flying, had done little 
long-distance work, and, having received his training 
in war-times — when short flights, only, were needed, 
— he had done but little navigation. With his char¬ 
acteristic interest in any new thing, however, he had 
thrown himself into navigational study, and Orvie — 
in spite of class instruction — found that his father 
learned even more quickly than he did. 

Orvie had gone into the matter very thoroughly, 
and had several kinds of compasses on board, the 
parallel grid or P.2, an aperiodic compass for use with 
a radiognometer, and an Earth Inductor compass, 
such as was used by Lindbergh and Chamberlin. He 
had learned to use the R.A.E. artificial horizon or 
bubble sextant, and, of course, he had become fairly 
expert in the reception of direction-finding radio. A 
new model of drift meter, to indicate the angle at 
which the plane is being driven from her course by 
side-winds, had been tested out and proved most 
effective. 

Of course, the usual instruments were quite famil¬ 
iar to him: the altimeter, a form of aneroid barom¬ 
eter to show altitude in hundreds and thousands of 


254 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

feet; an air-speed indicator, essential to determine 
the most economical cruising speed; the inclinom¬ 
eter, very useful to show whether or not the craft 
is on an even keel, a matter by no means easy to de¬ 
termine in a fog; the gyroscopic turn indicator which 
acts as a sensitive correction to the compass; the rate- 
of-climb indicator, which gives notice if a climb is so 
abrupt as to menace a stall, or a dive too severe for 
the margin of safety; the air-distance recorder or air- 
log, absolutely essential for dead reckoning; and the 
engine instruments, such as the tachometer to indi¬ 
cate the speed of the engine in revolutions per min¬ 
ute, and the pressure, gasoline-level, and fuel-flow 
gauges. 

Map-reading — which is far more of an art than 
it seems — had been thoroughly drilled into the boy 
at class. This had been necessary even for his 
Transport Pilot’s License, but, for his own satisfac¬ 
tion, Orvie had taken private instruction in some of 
the more advanced branches. His meteorological 
instruction, too, had been fairly complete, and even 
the most complicated plotted curves of isotherms, 
weather variations, wind currents, and the like were 
quite familiar. In short, Orvie was well on the way 
to becoming a thoroughly experienced pilot. But 
it had taken him three years’ work. 



Vought Airplane at Night, Showing Illumination for Take-off. 






Lieutenant J. R. Tate, Before Jump at Pearl Harbor, Honolulu. 










PAN-AMERICA 


255 

Very few minutes after Orvie had taken the air, 
the big Pipestone roared clear over the Gulf of Mex¬ 
ico and the low-lying shores of Louisiana were left 
behind. The route of their great flight had been 
plotted with infinite accuracy, and the plotting map 
was stretched out before Major Lee. By the use of 
head-phones, both fliers were able to talk freely, 
despite the roar of the twin motors. No passengers 
had been taken, and, for this flight and the return, 
some of the seats had been taken out of the cabin 
and the vacant places filled with cans of gas. 

Their plan was an ambitious one. 

The Pan-American Mail is planned for a route via 
Cuba and Yucatan to a point near Vera Cruz, but 
Orvie and his father had decided to try a non-stop 
flight directly across the Gulf of Mexico to the City of 
Mexico, and, if everything held out, to shoot straight 
across the isthmus to the Pacific Ocean, drop an aerial 
message at Colima, circle around the semi-active vol¬ 
cano of Colima, and return to the Mexican capital. 

If this could be done, it would be a record flight, 
and, above all, it would give the Mexicans a strong 
conviction of the powers of this great eight-passen¬ 
ger plane, for it would show that the Pipestone had 
enough power not only to make the trip, but 700 miles 
more into the bargain. Closely figured, this meant 


256 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

nearly 1600 miles in the air. As the Sikorsky’s eco¬ 
nomic flying speed was a trifle over 110 miles an hour, 
and as the weather reports were entirely favorable, 
this did not mean more than 15 or 16 hours’ flying. 
It was less, then, than the Los Angeles to New York 
non-stop flight successfully accomplished in August, 
1928, by Col. Goebel and H. J. Tucker; they took 18 
hours, 58 minutes in a Lockhead-Vega. 

Moreover, both Orvie and his father were trained 
pilots, and they could spell each other at the controls 
at four-hour intervals. Both were air navigators, 
too, so the work of plotting and calculation could go 
on continuously. 

Owing to the great size and lifting power of the 
Pipestone, the carrying of food was no difficulty, and 
each pilot could eat as much as he pleased while the 
other was at the controls. There was no danger of 
fog or rain. No barometric depression was reported 
as being over the Pacific, and none could develop in a 
single day’s flying. 

The Pipestone had taken off a little after 3 a.m., 
with the advance grey of dawn in the June sky. The 
flight had been planned so that, should all go well, 
the fliers would be able to make their tour and still 
land in Mexico City by daylight. They had decided 
not to take the air-mail route via Merida, but to make 


PAN-AMERICA 257 

a straight line to Tampico, where, in case of need, a 
landing could be made. 

“A good take-off, Orvie,” said his father, when the 
last of the Mississippi delta-land was disappearing 
from view. “How is she running?” 

“Perfectly! The engine turning seventeen, fifty; 
temperature a hundred and twenty. You can hear 
the motors!” 

They were running superbly. In spite of the fact 
that they had already seen a good deal of usage, the 
two “Wasps” had not given a minute’s trouble since 
the day that Orvie first took the machine to fly to flood 
rescue work. A good deal of the credit of this had to 
be given to Orvie, himself, for he was as particular 
and painstaking in his inspection and overhaul as 
in the old days when he first undertook a mechanic’s 
work on the old Dan’l Boone at Lake Noocumpook. 

For this flight, every possible preparation had been 
made, though it was not until the very day before 
the start that Major Lee and Orvie had divulged 
their plans to any one. That day, however, they 
had informed the head of the flying-field at New 
Orleans, and telegrams had been sent to the Aero¬ 
nautics Division of the Chamber of Commerce, to the 
National Geographic Society, and to the President 
of the Lumber Corporation which had been the donor 


258 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

of the plane, for Orvie always had taken the pains to 
keep the President informed of all his movements. 

“This following wind/’ said the Major cheerfully, 
a little farther on, “is going to help us a lot.” 

“And we’re going at a hundred and twelve an hour 
with three-quarters throttle,” agreed Orvie. “That’s 
a ground speed of nearly a hundred and thirty, isn’t 
it?” 

“About that.” 

A moment later: 

“Here’s a radio from Grosvenor of the National 
Geographic Society, wishing us good luck. It doesn’t 
look as if we need to go eastward to Metamoros, does 
it?” 

“Not a bit! Let’s go on to Australia!” 

The major smiled. Charles Kingford-Smith and 
Charles Ulm had done that, not very long before, 
flying from California to Australia in a Fokker plane, 
— a wonderful trip. But the boy’s enthusiasm was 
infectious. 

“What altitude are you keeping her at?” he asked. 

“Just under two thousand. And not a cloud in 
the sky! Great!” 

The plane roared on. 

Shortly after 6 o’clock, Major Lee got out the ther¬ 
mos bottle of coffee and some ham-and-egg sand- 


PAN-AMERICA 


259 

wiches and made a hearty breakfast. His hunger 
appeased, he changed places with Orvie and took the 
controls. 

“Watch the chart and the log,” he said. “We’re 
running about S.E. half E. to allow for the drift. 
And eat hearty!” 

“I’m ready for grub,” the boy admitted. “Say, 
Father, this isn’t like Arctic stuff, is it? It’s just like 
a joy-ride.” 

“Wait till we get to the mountains, Son,” came his 
father’s warning. 

“I’ve hopped the Alleghanies twice,” said Orvie, 
with his mouth full. 

Between nine and ten o’clock a blue line showed 
on the horizon. The Major was the first to see it. 

“Mexico!” said he. 

“And both motors running like a charm!” 

Orvie swung his arms and let out a whoop of joy. 

“We’ve done it, Dad; we’ve done it!” 

“The first lap, anyway. Now, come and take the 
joy-stick. I’ve got to get the cameras ready.” 

This was the only branch of the work which, for 
some reason or other, Orvie did poorly. There’s a 
knack in aerial photography, and the boy had never 
caught it. 

The Mexican shore got nearer. 


260 with the u. s. aviators 

“We’ve allowed a bit too much for drift/’ said the 
Major, presently, “give her two points of southing, 
Orvie.” 

The course was changed. 

Presently oil derricks appeared below them. 

“This must be Tampico. Yes, that’s it. Drop 
her a bit, now, Orvie.” 

“What altitude?” 

“Two hundred, about.” 

“I can come lower if you like?” 

“No, that’s enough. . . . There, three plates 
ought to do. I’ll drop the parachute message. . . . 
Let her climb again, Son, we don’t want to waste gas, 
circling. 

“Eh, what’s that!” he cried sharply, as the plane 
gave an uneasy wobble. “Just a bump, I suppose.” 

“I was told,” said Orvie, “the air’s always bumpy 
when you come from sea to shore. I’ll put her up a 
bit.” 

“Don’t get too high; we want to follow the course 
of the Panuco River. If we get too far south, here, 
the mountains go climbing up. Orizaba gets to 
18,000 feet.” 

“We could clear it!” 

“We’re not going to try any tricks,” said his father. 
“Keep your eye on the compass and follow directions. 


PAN-AMERICA 261 

I 

. . . How the river twists! Let’s get a bit higher 
and airline it. . . . That’s the idea.” 

They flew on. 

“Now we’re on the plateau. We break away from 
the river, here, and follow the railroad. Strike north, 

Son. Drop her a bit, I can’t see the railroad line_ 

Yes, there it is. Through the low pass ahead. . . . 
That must be Zuniga. Straight east, now, for San 
Luis Potosi. We’ll be there in half an hour.” 

“There is a town ahead!” said Orvie presently. 
“Doesn’t it look grand? Good place for a landing- 
field.” 

“Down, Son. I’ll take a few plates. . . . There 
we are! . . . Now, let me take the controls for a 
couple of hours. This is smooth sailing. How’s the 
gas level?” 

“We’ve got enough to go round Mexico a dozen 
times!” 

“I hate exaggeration!” said the Major peevishly. 
“But we can do Colima, I think, easily. That wind 
astern, all across the Gulf, helped us a lot. Go and 
take some lunch.” 

But when they saw in the distance the range of 
the Sierra Madre Occidentale, Orvie resumed his 
piloting. It was only a little after 1 o’clock and they 
could have reached City of Mexico early in the 


262 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

afternoon. But both were anxious to see the Pacific. 
They flew over Aguas Calientes and Guadalajara, 
following the railroad for 100 miles east of that city, 
and then bent southwards. 

A dark line appeared. 

“The Pacific!” cried Orvie. “Everything is com¬ 
ing our way!” 

The Major said nothing, but he was not less 
pleased. 

They ran far enough out to be actually flying over 
the Pacific, and then, following instructions, Orvie 
struck southward and followed the coast for about 75 
miles. 

“Strike inland now. . . . Ah, there’s the volcano! 
She’s smoking.” 

“Where? Oh!” 

There was disappointment in the boy’s voice. 

“I suppose you expected to find it spouting fire like 
a blast-furnace!” exclaimed his father, amusedly. 
“You can’t expect to do everything, Son! Photo¬ 
graphing an active volcano is a piece of luck which, 
so far, has fallen to only one group of fliers.” 

“Who are they?” 

“Army men at Honolulu. The vulcanologist at 
the great Hawaiian volcano of Kilauea asked for 
aerial photographs of the crater in eruption and the 


PAN-AMERICA 263 

flow of the lava streams. Two bombers and a Loen- 
ing Amphibian were sent. They had a hard time 
taking the photographs, for the air was violently 
bumpy and the fumes were dangerous. 

“But there was only one real adventure. One of 
the planes was flying low to photograph the moving 
lava, when it was noted that the stream suddenly 
separated and sent forth a rapidly flowing branch to¬ 
ward the sea. The photographer asked the pilot to 
follow, to see what happened. 

“They saw! As that molten river struck the 
waters of the bay, it hurled a cloud of steam a thou¬ 
sand feet in air. The edge of the steam whirl caught 
the wing of the plane, or almost. A second later, and 
the plane would have been in the steam itself and 
both fliers scalded to death instantly. A steep bank 
and a shooting glide just saved them in the nick of 
time. But they circled and got splendid photos of 
that terrific steam-pillar, which rose without ceasing 
for forty-six hours in that battle between fire and 
sea.” 

There’s nothing like that here! ” said the boy. “Oh 
yes, there’s a little stream of lava, isn’t it? It cer¬ 
tainly looks like lava.” 

“It is. Come; careful! Let’s see how near we 
can get for a photo. . . . Lookout!” 


264 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 

A swirl of heated air threw the plane to one side 
with a jolt. 

Orvie straightened it instantly. 

“There’d be no landing here, Father/’ he com¬ 
mented. 

“No. But I want some plates. Don’t circle. Get 
up and shoot down. I’ll snap as we go past. Ready? 
Let her dive!” 

The Pipestone, with a fairly steep dive added to 
her engine power at full throttle, plunged down at 
150 or 160 miles an hour. The Major snapped the 
plates of both cameras, but, at that instant, he was 
hurled to the floor of the cabin. 

The plane had side-slipped, and the air was a tur¬ 
moil of eddies. 

Well for Orvie that he had done some work in aero¬ 
batics! 

The flat spin took a vicious spiral, but the boy, not 
losing his head, gently brought her toward a level keel, 
then nosed her down to a steep glide, almost parallel 
with the slope of the volcano. Below were trees. 

But, before they got to them, the Pipestone was in 
control again and shooting off to safety. 

“Wow!” said Orvie. 

The Major made no comment. 

The shave had been a close one. 


PAN-AMERICA 265 

Time was getting on. It was after four o’clock. 

Flying past the volcano again — but keeping at a 
safe range from it — the Sikorsky climbed over the 
saw-tooth points of the Sierra Madre, and, under the 
Major’s directions, found herself over the city of 
Guadalajara again. Thence it was but 300 miles to 
the City of Mexico. 

“Have we enough gas?” 

“None too much,” said Orvie. “How’s the wind?” 

“Not much wind of any kind.” 

“We ought to make it. Take the controls, Father; 
that volcano business gave me a bit of a turn.” 

Orvie was a little pale. More, even, than his 
father, he realized how narrow had been their escape. 
But he soon was himself again, and, as they came over 
Mexico City in the early evening, he took the con¬ 
trols for landing. The plane alighted like a bird, and 
taxied to a hangar amid the enthusiastic shouts of 
the crowd which had gathered, enlightened by the 
telegraphic dispatches from Tampico, San Luis Po- 
tosi, Guadalajara, and Colima, to say nothing of 
cables from New Orleans. 

There is no need to tell of the receptions given to 
the two aviators, but the greatest triumph of all came 
at the very end. 

“Our purpose in flying to Mexico,” said Major Lee 


266 WITH THE U. S. AVIATORS 


in a ringing speech, “was to have the honor of bring¬ 
ing back to America, as the first airplane passenger 
across the Gulf of Mexico, some citizen of this repub¬ 
lic. Let the people of the City of Mexico choose. 
We can take four passengers and, if it seems fitting 
to you, we should like one of them to be a woman.” 

They cheered him to the echo. 

“And,” added Orvie, “I’d like one of them to be a 
boy!” 

A week later, the Pipestone took the air in a per¬ 
fect riot of shouting and siren-whistles. She had 
aboard one of the leading officials of the Mexican Air 
Force and his wife, a member of the Mexican Govern¬ 
ment, and a Mexican Boy Scout. Wind and weather 
were fair, and nine hours after leaving the Mexican 
capital, Orvie brought his plane down on the New 
Orleans landing-field. 

“This,” said the Mayor of New Orleans, as he wel¬ 
comed them, “is a true Pan-American alliance. Our 
guests from the Republic of Mexico come to us, in a 
Canadian-given and American-built plane, with 
United States aviators. Long life to Pan-America!” 


THE END 










































































































